ornia 
ial 

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LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
RIVERS1DI 


THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 


THE 

ROGUE'S   MARCH 


.Shams  and  Verities  in  History  and 

Biography:     Or,    Do    You    Know 

a  Great  Man  When  You  See  Him, 

and  If  so,  By  What  Signs? 


BY 

JOHN  HUBERT  GREUSEL 
Hi 


Wast  thou  fain,  poor  father, 

To  hovel  thee  with  swine  and  rogues  forlorn 

In  short  and  musty  straw? 


NEW  YORK 

FIFTH  AVENUE  PUBLISHING  CO. 
PUBLISHERS 


Gl 


COPYRIGHT,  1916,  BY 
JOHN  HUBERT  GREUSEL 


The  Rogue's  March 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  MILLSTONES  AND  THE  GRAIN     ....  i 

II.  THE  MUMMY'S  ELOQUENT  SILENCE     .  12 

III.  STUDY  THE  SECRET  HISTORY     ....  15 

IV.  FAGOTS  OF  JOAN  STILL  BLAZE     ...  21 
V.  CORONATIONS   AND  CRUCIFIXIONS     .     .  27 

VI.  WHAT      Is      THIS      THING      CALLED 

"GREAT"? 34 

VII.     LIFE'S    AMAZING    IRONY 41 

VIII.     THE  WREATH  OF  CYPRESS 45 

IX.  HISTORY  TEACHES  MAN  NOTHING     .     .  47 

X.  THE  HUMAN  KALEIDOSCOPE     ....  60 

XI.  ALL  MEN  AT  HEART  TYRANTS     ...  74 

XII.     THE  PROFOUND  FALLACY 78 

XIII.  ALL  LIFE  A  BATTLE 88 

XIV.  WHY  WAR  PERSISTS 94 

XV.  WHAT  O'CLOCK  WITH  THE  WORLD?     .  99 

XVI.     BLOOD  WILL  TELL 107 

XVII.  THE    CELESTIAL    BIOGRAPH      .     .     .     .  in 

XVIII.  WHAT  THEN  Is  "HISTORY"?     ....  114 

XIX.  THE  ROGUE'S   MARCH  118 


THE  MILLSTONES  AND  THE  GRAIN:  A  WORD 
WITH  THE  READER 

Wast  thou  fain,  poor  father, 

To  hovel  thee  with  swine  and  rogues  forlorn 

In  short  and  musty  straw? 

If  What  is  this  book,  "The  Rogue's  March,"  about?  We 
can  tell  you  in  a  few  words. 

Nay,  make  no  grievous  error:  what  we  have  heretofore 
lived  by,  we  can  live  by  no  longer,  historically  speaking. 
fl  We  built  for  ourselves  a  beautiful  Garden  of  Lies  and 
called  it  our  Garden  of  Eden.  And  we  read  and  believed 
our  pig-trough  history,  wherein  we  were  representing 
ourselves  as  an  angel  with  a  revolver  in  our  hand;  and 
we  learned  to  look  on  it  as  something  good,  to  go  by,  and 

to  live  by 

ft  Men  talk  of  writing  history  or  biography  as  tho  this 
were  some  profound  record  attainable  only  thru  year- 
long researches  by  students  all  but  going  blind  in  dust- 
laden  National  archives. 

But  the  simple  Old  Testament  borrows  a  tremendous  ad- 
vantage over  all  the  books  man  writes  and  calls  histories ; 


2  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

for  the  Old  Testament  is  the  only  history  in  which  man  is 
called,  to  his  face,  hypocrite,  thief  and  liar. 
Man,  reading  these  plain  words,  marvels  at  them,  and 
not  wishing  to  make  a  confession  against  himself,  replies 
that  such  extraordinary  utterances  "must"  be  inspired, 
the  judgment  of  a  superman,  yea  of  God. 
ft  For  man,  in  all  the  mountains  of  history  in  which  he 
has  told  his  own  tale,  has  never  been  frank  enough  to 
look  at  himself  as  he  is. 

Always  in  the  crises  of  his  affairs  does  he  need  a  sacrifice 
to  let  him,  personally,  go  free,  the  verdict  being  "Not 
Guilty!" 

Therefore,  when  suddenly  confronted  with  himself,  some- 
what as  he  is,  in  all  his  moral  nakedness  as  revealed 
by  the  Great  War  of  1914,  he  deplores  that  he  has  been 
driven  out  of  his  Garden  of  Eden. 
Which  is  only  another  way  of  saying  his  Garden  of  Lies. 

§       §       § 

ft  At  this  solemn  moment,  stript  of  his  last  rags  of  his- 
torical self-praise,  before  his  eyes  the  spectacle  of  some 
five  millions  of  his  brothers  around  him  in  death-agonies, 
this  peculiar  animal  otherwise  known  as  man  is  now 
standing  naked  before  his  fellow-kind  in  acknowledged 
self-distrust  of  all  the  old  lies  by  which  once  he  was 
wont  to  fool  himself. 

ft  It  cannot  longer  be  concealed  that  the  eye  of  the  eagle 
sees  more  than  the  eye  of  the  groveling  toad. 
Is  he  not  now  tired  of  being  a  toad  and  seeks  to  be  an 
eagle  ? 

Eeenie,  meenie,  minee,  mo.  Tis  all  very  human.  And 
this  is  our  story:  The  toad  that  would  be  an  eagle,  the 
eagle  that  grovels  again  till  it  has  its  wish  and  becomes 
a  toad. 


WAS  HUXLEY  DREAMING?  3 

fl  The  foregoing,  too,  should  be  the  basis  of  the  new  and 
honest  type  of  history  or  biography  that  will  take  its  rise 
from  the  close  of  the  Great  War  of  1914. 
In  plain  words,  in  the  past  we  have  too  long  been  writing 
history  in  a  way  that,  in  effect,  has  been  a  sort  of  glori- 
fied Rogue's  March,  wherein  man  has  deliberately  pre- 
sented himself  as  a  poseur. 

In  the  hope  of  helping  end  this  dastardly  form  of  his- 
torical and  biographical  quackery,  we  rudely  sketch 
herein  what  to  our  mind  comprise  some  of  the  simple, 
age-old  and  highly  interesting  human  facts  that  hereto- 
fore have  been  ignored  in  writing  history  or  biography, 
and  should  henceforth  have  large  place  as  underlying 
principles,  in  work  along  these  lines, 
fl  In  the  old-line  average  light  and  pleasant  work  of  fiction 
known  as  history  or  biography,  world-old  dramas  re- 
staged  from  generation  to  generation  have  been  brought 
forward  as  indications  of  rising  power  of  good  in  men's 
ways :  but  the  wolf's  heart  is  still  there,  as  in  the  dawn 
of  time. 

fl  Over  and  over  again,  generation  after  generation,  it  is 
the  story  of  the  millstones  and  the  grain. 

.§       §       § 
fl  Here,  for  example,  is  what  a  very  wise  man  says  of' 

men's  ways :  "The  practice  of  that  which  is  ethically  best 
involves  a  course  of  conduct  in  all  respects  opposed  to 
'success'  in  the  cosmic  struggle  for  existence.  In  the 
place  of  ruthless  self-assertion,  it  demands  self-restraint ; 
in  place  of  thrusting  aside  or  treading  down  all  com- 
petitors, it  requires  not  merely  that  the  individual  shall 
respect  but  shall  help  his  fellows ;  its  influence  is  directed 
not  so  much  to  the  survival  of  the  fittest  as  to  the  fitting 
of  as  many  as  possible  to  survive.  It  repudiates  the 
gladiatorial  theory  of  existence." 


4  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

fl  These  plain  words  are  found  on  page  82,  Huxley's 
"Evolution."  The  question  now  arises,  in  what  sense  are 
these  ideas  to  be  understood — as  a  reality  or  as  a  dream 
of  social  democracy? 

Is  it  all  merely  a  fantastic  mind-picture  but  little  removed 
from  sleep-walking,  wherein  the  impressions  on  your 
brain  blend  more  with  the  illusion  than  with  the  realism 
of  life  as  found;  or,  we  repeat,  is  it  something  really 
bulwarked  on  life,  as  actually  lived  by  human  beings  in 
this  little  world  we  see  around  us,  day  by  day  ? 

§      §      § 

fl  There  are  those  that  hold  that,  with  minor  and  negli- 
gible modifications,  the  great  moral  principles  upon  which 
our  social  fabric  rests  remain  always  practically  the 
same.  These  are  the  brotherhood-people,  to  be  sure. 
Men  who  reason  thus  profess  merely  to  be  interested  and 
not  specially  disturbed  when  surveying  human  nature  in 
action :  regarding  the  passions  of  mankind  with  an  indul- 
gent eye;  therefore  easily  disposing  of  our  moral  lapses 
as  negligible  incidentals  in  no  wise  affecting  permanently 
the  great  moral  principles  so  termed  on  which  our  social 
fabric  is  said  to  be  buttressed. 

ft  But  is  not  this  separation,  strictly  for  purposes  of  his- 
tory and  biography,  parallel  in  essence  to  the  illogical  tho 
lawyer-like  contention  of  Portia:  that  there  is  in  truth 
and  in  fact,  gentlemen  of  the  jury,  a  widely  marked 
distinction  between  the  flesh  and  the  blood?  Why  not 
flesh  without  blood  and  blood  without  flesh?  Exactly. 
Why  not  men's  ways  without  the  man,  or  man  without 
his  ways? 

Is  it  true  because  Portia  said  it  with  lady-like  grace — 
was  it  ever  true — and  is  it  true  to-day  because  for  his 
own  peculiar  lawyer-like  ends  the  National  history- 
monger  utilizes  the  conception  of  an  imaginary  line  of 


BATTLES,  PESTILENCE,  MARTYRS          5 

demarcation  as  between  the  man  and  his  ways,  in  order 
to  support,  let  us  say,  things  as  they  are  not  ? 
Has  your  own  private  conduct  to  do  with  political 
changes,  restorations,  revolutions,  or  has  your  life,  like 
that  of  the  race,  speaking  as  a  whole,  been  worked  out 
largely  thru  causes  that  are  not  subject  to  politico-legal 
classification,  in  dusty  pigeon-holes  of  National  archives  ? 
Use  your  common  sense. 

§       §       § 

ft  Rude  as  it  may  appear  that  we  should  even  hint  at  it, 
but  are  you  prepared  to  show  that  on  the  whole  your 
individual  life  shows  less  failings  than  marked  the  lives 
of  the  fathers,  likewise  that  your  complaints,  passions  and 
wishes  are  more  detached  from  your  own  heart?  This 
being  true  or  false,  as  you  like  it,  at  any  rate,  to  quote 
the  gifted  pen  of  Francis  Hackett,  "what  objection  can 
you  have  against  permitting  the  young  to  know  the  im- 
mense deceptions  of  the  whole  elaborate  (social)  contri- 
vance .  .  .  and  to  show  that  under  the  starched  bosom 
of  the  world  there  is  a  heart  very  different  from  the 
heart  that  the  bosom  advertises.  We  know  it,  but  the 
man  who  speaks  it  is  a  traitor  to  the  principalities  of 
starch." 

§       §       § 

fl  In  this  book  we  have  to  do  with  plain  and  obvious 
facts,  not  as  "facts,"  but  as  confessions  of  definite  phases 
of  human  nature  that,  if  they  do  not  mark  our  progress 
at  least  define  cur  limitations  as  human  beings,  in  the 
present  state  of  our  onward  march. 
We  shall  have  much  to  say  of  battles,  pestilence,  martyrs, 
prisoners,  meanness  and  blindness,  the  shame  of  things, 
their  smallness,  and  on  the  whole  the  prodigious  waste 
of  life,  as  found. 
Sticking  these  things  under  your  nose,  without  further 


6  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

flatteries  and  stript  of  the  deprecations  of  professional 
history-mongers,  at  least  we  are  in  a  position  no  longer 
to  deceive  ourselves  as  to  "what"  we  represent. 
fl  Whether  as  Mr.  Hackett  sets  up  the  endeavor  to  put 
more  "truth"  into  history  or  biography  in  the  end  merely 
proclaims  the  critic's  errancy  of  judgment,  and  makes 
obvious  the  critic's  individual  sentimentalities,  softnesses 
or  hardnesses,  and  all  that,  does  not  necessarily  disbar 
thinking  men  from  conjuring  up  if  not  a  better  then  at 
least  a  more  honest  social  contrivance  than  that  hereto- 
fore recorded  in  books :  but  that  the  old-line  book-record 
is  anywhere  near  the  authentic  life-record  can  no  longer 
be  supported  in  this  solemn  hour — and  we  will  tell  you 
why.  Scribblers  of  all  nations,  like  their  soldier-brothers, 
are  hiding  behind  hastily  dug  trenches  and  are  in  mortal 
terror  of  the  frightful  mines  exploding  unexpectedly 
round  about. 

Of  a  sudden  the  whole  affair  tumbling  around  our  ears, 
we  are  much  in  the  position  of  Nydia,  the  blind  girl  at 
Pompeii,  endeavoring  to  flee  a  catastrophe  invisible  to  her 
dead  eyes  yet  tremendously  real  to  the  mind  that  shrinks 
back  upon  itself,  in  terror. 

fl  The  plain  fact  is  that  the  average  man  is  always  con- 
cerned in  realizing  himself  in  his  own  way,  as  against 
even  the  conventional  flatteries  of  history  in  supporting 
the  social  contract :  hence  it  is  inevitable  now  and  then 
that  beneath  the  placid  surface  of  our  well-ordered  social 
theatricals  explosions  are  constantly  taking  place.  These 
eruptions  are  often  volcanic  in  violence :  till  the  wonder 
is  that  Society  itself  does  not  blow  up. 

§       §       § 

fl  In  this  Republic  of  ours  we  do  solemnly  protest  in  our 
official  scribblings  that  we  are  devoted  to  diverse  forms 
of  idealism,  among  others  these; 


LAUNCHING  THE  CURSE  •  7 

Our  statesmen  proclaim  that  they  live  to  do  good  to  all 
mankind,  whereas  for  the  spoils  of  commerce  see  no 
inconsistency  in  supplying  hundreds  of  millions'  worth 
of  deadly  weapons  to  European  combatants  already 
locked  in  death-agonies;  yet  in  the  next  breath  protest 
that  our  peculiar  conduct  is  to  be  charged  to  high  ideals 
for  "humanity." 

Our  religious  sects  launch  the  curse  against  one  another 
and  despite  their  endless  piffle  about  brotherhood,  are 
widely  separated  by  such  things  as  church  architecture, 
likewise  openly  exhibiting  the  strangest  anomoly  between 
the  lives  of  members  and  their  affirmations  of  brother- 
hood. 

In  short,  the  present  writer  has  never  been  able  to  know 
whether  or  not  a  man  was  a  Christian  except  by  asking 
him,  "Are  you  a  Christian  ?"  not  being  able  to  tell  other- 
wise, just  as  you  ask,  "Are  you  a  Democrat,  or  are  you 
a  Republican  ?" 

And  as  for  political  parties,  it  is  of  course  conceded  that 
the  beginning  and  the  end  is  to  cry  out  in  the  market- 
place that  the  victory  is  for  the  people,  even  as  the  yellow 
editor  asks  for  support  because  of  idealism  and  not  for 
dirty  dollars.  Finally,  the  leaders  of  the  masses  may 
always  be  relied  on  to  insist  that  their  sole  aim  is  for  the 
common  good. 

fl  Each  element  has  thus  its  day  of  power  only  to  misuse 
that  power  when  riding  in  on  the  necks  of  the  prostrate : 
and  as  ever  even  the  lowest  prostitute  always  makes  a 
show  of  sham  fight  for  her  virtue,  not  caring  to  yield  too 
readily  when  wishing  to  impress  a  new  lover,  likewise 
old-line  history  and  biography  mongers  are  always  to  be 
depended  on  to  play  well  their  dirty  part,  maintaining  at 
all  hazards  spurious  outward  protestations  of  the  brother- 
hood-cult regardless  of  the  wolf's  heart  within. 


8  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

ff  O,  the  waste  of  it,  and  the  curse  of  it ;  the  precious 
time  lost  in  idle  and  monstrous  flatteries;  stereotyping 
and  repeating  in  this  Age  of  Machinery  lie  on  lie  to 
bolster  and  sustain  a  rotten  situation:  keeping  men  in 
bondage  because  concealing  reality  and  making  men  satis- 
fied thru  a  smug  complaisancy  largely  composed  of 
moral  wind  and  gas. 

fl  Therefore,  let  us  in  "The  Rogue's  March"  have  done 
with  great  men  for  awhile,  and  return  to  men  not  great, 
the  little  ways  of  men,  that  is  to  say,  men  as  they  are: 
then,  if  we  are  not  satisfied  we  will  at  least  no  longer 
deceive  ourselves. 

§       §       § 

fl  In  this  connection  it  is  a  pleasure  for  the  present  writer, 
in  passing,  to  lift  his  hat  to  an  old  pal,  one  who  passed 
twenty  years  in  the  U.  S.  Press  Gallery,  Franklin  H. 
Hosford. 

fl  "Greatness  to  my  mind,"  says  Hosford,  "is  either  a  fact 
or  a  fiction:  excellent  men  are  numerous,  good  men  are 
of  course  frequent,  but  great  men  seldom  come  along, 
and  when  they  are  great  they  are,  according  to  my  obser- 
vation, not  always  good. 

fl  "Many  a  vain  pretender  I  have  seen  glorified  in  the 
press,  many  a  modest  man  of  great  merit  utterly  escaping 
mention. 

fl  "Why  is  this  ?  And  as  for  what  is  called  the  'truth'  of 
history,  we  know  that  History  is  notoriously  untruthful, 
when  read  outside  volumes  of  Divine  inspiration." 

§       §       § 

fl  However,  there  is  no  need  to  despair.  Real  history,  if 
written  under  a  method  that  will  not  begin  by  excluding 
man  from  the  picture,  will  be  found  to  have  for  its  basis 
very  simple  human  elements:  comprising  such  known 
facts  as  lust,  gluttony,  vanity,  with  now  and  then  a 


HISTORY'S  TRUE  EPITOME  9 

glimpse  of  milder  qualities  that  link  man's  life  to  another 
world. 

If  you  have  any  curiosity  in  this  matter  it  can  be  satis- 
fied for  ten  cents.  The  complete  classification  will  cost 
you  only  one  dime,  and  you  will  find  the  list  condensed 
on  less  than  half  a  page  of  type  in  a  slim  green  booklet, 
read  by  children  of  the  Roman  Catholic  church. 
In  this  tiny  brochure,  you  can  acquaint  yourself  with  the 
foundations  of  all  history  worthy  of  the  name — as  out- 
lined briefly  in  a  literal  statement  covering  the  survey  of 
the  human  passions. 

ff  We  refer  of  course  to  the  booklet  called  the  Catechism : 
and  confine  our  remarks  to  the  summary  of  the  passions, 
not  to  other  parts  dealing  with  dogma. 
We  tell  you  this  plainly,  that  you  may  educate  yourself 
to  respect  truth  wherever  found :  for  if  ever  there  was  a 
classification  of  man's  ways  that  has  stood  and  will  stand 
the  test  of  time,  that  summary  is  along  the  line  of  the 
eternal  passions,  as  set  forth  simply,  for  the  child's  mind. 
Numbering  these  passions  may  be  simple  enough,  but  the 
application  is  of  course  often  extremely  subtle  and  baf- 
fling; but  whether  or  not  you  are  successful  in  your 
efforts  to  trace  the  connection,  depend  upon  it  the  method 
is  correct. 

Man  and  his  little  ways  in  round  terms  of  his  passions — 
here  all  history  begins  and  ends. 

We  say  this  stript  of  all  by-play,  and  wholly  in  the  de- 
tached attitude  of  the  judge,  summing  up  the  evidence 
and  pointing  out  the  law. 

§       §       § 

fl  Hereafter,  when  you  read  history  or  biography,  suppose 
you  sit  down  and  square  its  validity  with  an  accredited 
list  of  the  human  passions?  You  will  then  be  in  a 


io  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

position  to  clear  your  mind  of  hypocrisy  and  flatteries, 
and  will  know  whether  or  not  you  have  looked  on  the 
picture  of  a  human  being,  or  on  some  imaginary  person 
or  nation. 

Not  as  a  churchman  but  as  a  man  of  the  world  we  have 
drawn  on  the  little  list  in  the  child's  book,  as  we  pass 
along.  In  each  instance  cited  in  "The  Rogue's  March" 
he  who  runs  may  read. 

§    -§       § 

ff  Always  remember,  in  all  history  worth  while,  the  feeble 
human  spirit  must  have  something  to  take  hold  of,  and 
to  feel.  This  something  is,  necessarily,  what  heretofore 
historians  and  biographers  seemed  banded  to  suppress — 
the  plain  record  of  human  passions,  as  fundamental  facts, 
comprising  thus  the  real  tho  overlooked  and  ignored  basis 
of  all  human  records  whatsoever. 

§      §      § 

fl  One  last  word :  It  seems  strange,  does  it  not,  that  men 
should  go  to  so  much  pains  to  teach  the  child  a  working 
list  of  the  human  passions,  only  to  have  the  man,  him- 
self, pay  no  attention  to  the  information  in  writing  about 
life? 

This  assertion  of  ours  at  first  blush  sounds  too  broad: 
but  for  justification  if  not  for  literal  reply  we  refer  you, 
herewith,  to  the  picture  of  Civilization  contained  in  this 
"The  Rogue's  March." 

fl  The  first  great  primeval  element  in  human  history  is 
hunger :  whose  iron  law  reaches  all  the  way  from  feeding 
your  belly  to  feeding  your  mind:  and  quite  naturally  . 
after  your  belly  has  been  satisfied  vanity  creeps  in  to 
play  any  one  of  a  thousand  related  roles,  largely  hidden 
from  the  prying  eye,  to  be  sure,  but  vanity  just  the  same. 
We  therefore  begin  "The  Rogue's  March"  with  the 


ELEMENTAL  STUFF  II 

amiable  weakness  known  as  vanity,  human  elemental  stuff 
that  despite  all  apologists  and  sleep-walkers  of  history 
and  biography,  still  survives,  just  as  it  always  has:  and 
we  now  direct  your  attention  to  a  somewhat  startling  but 
very  human  instance,  withal. 


II 

THE  MUMMY'S  ELOQUENT  SILENCE 

ff  This  know  ye  at  once:  the  ironical  meaning 
behind  the  Mummy's  golden  rings  set  with  tur- 
quoise, makes  clear  that  the  human  heart  does 
not  change,  the  centuries  run  their  course  to 
oblivion. 

fl  In  the  Egyptian  Room  of  the  Metropolitan  Museum  the 
visitor  sees,  among  other  surprising  exhibits,  the  Mummy 
of  a  famous  Queen  that  lived  and  loved  in  a  dynasty 
all-powerful  three  thousand  years  before  the  birth  of 
Christ. 

Blackened  by  the  flight  of  centuries,  the  Mummy  still 
retains  a  pathetic  realism  that  fascinates  while  it  repels. 
fl  Her  gruesome  hands  peacefully  folded  across  her  bosom 
are  indeed  shriveled  to  a  husk,  yet  in  an  astonishing  de- 
gree make  human  appeal. 

At  first  glance,  these  hands  resemble  the  claws  of  a  wild 
beast  more  than  hands  of  a  human  being:  yet  on  closer 
inspection  excite  our  surprise,  reminding  us  of  some 
quaint  motif  in  black  marble,  wherein  with  infinite  care 
the  sculptor  has  indicated  the  fine  grain  of  the  skin,  even 
to  the  tiny  cups  of  the  hairs. 

With  hideous  realism  fossilized  knuckle-bones,  as  white 
as  chalk,  peep  through  the  black  curled  flesh,  contrasted 
with  which  we  behold  golden  rings  set  with  blue-green 

12 


TIME'S  OLDEST  TALE  13 

turquoise  looped  loosely  around  fingers  once  plump  and 
tapering  but  now  shriveled  like  the  claws  of  a  huge  bat. 
fl  Recovering  from  our  momentary  stupefication  at  this 
unusual  sight — Vanity  triumphant  over  Death! — we  de- 
rive instruction  in  men's  little  ways  by  studying  here 
a  classical  example  of  the  vicissitudes  of  human  existence, 
its  progress,  pride,  power,  failure,  agony,  and  its  death; 
and  discover  thus  before  us  some  of  the  strange  principles 
that  regulate  as  well  as  dominate  the  little  lives  of  men. 

§       §       § 

fl  In  preparing  her  body  for  the  rock-tomb,  the  Mummy's 
finger-nails  were  stained  with  warm  pigments,  her  hair 
exquisitely  dressed;  her  gentle  form,  now,  alas,  all  too 
soon  to  lose  its  grace  and  loveliness,  was  swathed  in 
precious  cloths  exhaling  the  odors  of  the  mystic  amaranth, 
that  flower  of  immortality ;  while,  too,  still  other  toilet 
secrets  lent  their  aid  that  the  Queen  might  always  remain 
beautiful  in  her  long  last  sleep. 

fl  On  the  lid  of  her  coffin,  renowned  artists  of  that  remote 
era,  had  carved  quaint  picture-writings  or  hieroglyphs, 
recording  the  fascinating  story  of  the  proud  beauty's  life ; 
each  tiny  character  was  enameled  with  a  finishing  polish 
of  plumbago  ;  and  even  to-day  after  the  flight  of  centuries 
the  precious  gloss  still  remains  undimmed. 
These  writings  have  indeed  the  exquisite  detail  of  fine 
black  lace — appealing,  mysterious — loving  last  tribute  of 
brown  hands  now  long  since  mouldered  into  dust. 
ff  Last  of  all,  they  clasped  on  the  Queen's  necklace,  also 
her  golden  beads  of  Ophir,  and  looped  in  her  ears  her 
golden  rings;  and  then  near  the  Mummy's  casket  in 
the  rock-bound  tomb,  ladies  in  waiting  placed  the  Queen's 
rouge-pots,  pastes,  powders,  and  perfumes ; — all  deemed 
indispensible  the  moment  the  Queen  awoke.  For  her  first 
impulse  naturally  would  be  to  see  herself  in  the  mirror. 


14  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

J[  Finally,  about  the  casket  were  assembled  many  dolls 
that  would  in  future  ages,  at  the  right  time  spring  into 
life  as  the  Queen's  servants.  Such  was  the  pious  belief 
of  that  remote  hour,  in  the  twilight  of  history. 
fl  Thus  loving  friends  in  those  last  sad  hours  left  nothing 
undone  that  the  body  according  to  their  generous  hope, 
might  continue  beautiful  indefinitely  —  though  shriveled 
to  a  shell. 


have  herein  reverently  lifted  the  veil's  edge  over 
thirty  centuries  of  time  —  just  for  an  instant!  —  and  we 
discover  that  the  human  heart  is  to-day  as  it  was  from 
the  beginning. 
How  very  human  it  all  is. 

We  respect  the  thought  behind  the  Mummy's  turquoise 
and  gold  ornaments,  her  perfumes,  dolls,  rouges,  paste- 
pots  and  her  mirror  ;  but  is  there  not  a  satire,  somewhere, 
when  we  think  of  man  and  his  little  ways? 
fl  With  slight  changes  of  background  and  era  could  it 
all  not  have  happened  yesterday?  Is  it  not,  in  short, 
actually  of  our  own  time  ? 

For  in  spite  of  all  our  high  brag  about  the  progress  shown 
by  our  boasted  Civilization,  that  is  to  say  our  air-ships, 
motor-cars,  our  uses  of  electricity,  and  all  our  other  utili- 
ties, this  Mummy  if  suddenly  awakened  from  her  sleep 
of  centuries  would  have  very  much  to  learn. 
But  as  to  the  vanities,  the  human  heart  is  as  it  always 
was  :  she  would  find  nothing  new  to  learn,  there. 
fi  Still  is  the  story  told  in  these  words  :  fighting,  loving, 
praying. 


Ill 

STUDY  THE  SECRET  HISTORY 

fl  The  eternal  passions  begin  and  end  the  study 
of  men's  ways:  forming  thus  the  real  interpreta- 
tion, from  Eden  down. 

fl  The  historian  divides  his  narrative  into  periods  Ancient 
and  Modern,  their  various  ramifications  laid  down  in  an 
orderly  manner ;  the  astronomer  marks  his  Spring,  Sum- 
mer, Autumn  and  Winter;  and  the  great  Shakespeare 
records  man's  life  in  Seven  Ages. 

Yet  no  man  has  numbered  the  complications  growing  out 
of  the  eternal  passions :  tho  few  in  number,  the  passions 
have  expressions  infinite  beyond  the  knowing,  therefore 
beyond  comprehensive  analysis. 

ft  Poets,  philosophers  and  sages,  thruout  ages  have  busied 
themselves   in   unending   endeavors   to   set    forth,   with 
proper  shadings,  flattering  accounts  of  man  and  his  little 
ways :  yet  the  world  at  this  late  date  still  awaits  a  Black- 
stone  of  History,  an  analyzer  who  will  so  number  and 
order  the  eternal  passions  that  henceforth  conflicting  in- 
terpretations of  man  and  his  ways  may  be  cleared. 
Vain  hope  you  say  ?    Who  knows  .  .  .   ? 
fl  Go  out  on  a  crowded  corner  and  watch  the  crowds 
swarming  by:  as  far  as  the  story  goes  the  scene  spells 
chaos. 
But  study  men's  ways  with  the  veneer  of  Civilization 

15 


16  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

stripped  off,  their  shadings  from  grave  to  gay,  from 
laughter  to  tears,  and  you  necessarily  conclude  that  all 
the  episodes  of  this  vain  and  turbulent  life,  as  primeval 
as  Eden,  hark  back  to  three  sources,  fighting,  loving  and 
praying. 

These  three  key-words  will,  too,  form  the  basis  of  the 
new  type  of  historical  and  biographical  writing  we  pur- 
pose to  tell  you  about,  a  history  very  strange  and  very 
new  in  this  respect :  Man  will  have  a  place  in  it,  with  all 
his  little  ways! 

fl  One  day,  perhaps,  a  new  Blackstone  will  provide  the 
master-key  to  unlock  all  the  tiny  well-nigh  invisible  trap- 
doors of  the  human  heart. 

And  then  we  will  have  history  written  as  it  should  be 
written — based  on  human  nature  in  action. 
Man's  ways  will  then  be  found  to  be  as  old  as  the  dust 
under  your  feet :  there  is  nothing  new  under  the  sun. 
From  Job  to  Tolstoi  nothing  else  is  recorded  other  than 
the  eternal  passions,  expressing  virtuous  or  evil  desire, 
as  men  use  these  strange  words  to  tell  something  that  is 
really  very  simple:  we  mean,  human  life. 
In  various   disguises  obscure   or  easily   penetrated   we 
find  our  old  friends  pride,  sloth,  envy,  covetousness,  van- 
ity, lust,  and  the  others;  and  now  and  again  on  rare 
occasions  we  run  across  passions  that  give  wings  to  man's 
imagination,  gathering  around  such  mystic  words  as  faith 
and  soul,  bridging  for  man  the  gulf,  infinitely  wide,  that 
lies  between  this  world  and  the  stars. 

§       §       § 

fl  Whatever  the  new  type  of  historical  writing  turns  out 
to  be,  at  least  the  answer  is  always  the  same — that  you 
must  know  the  heart,  and  that  at  best  it  is  very  old. 
Study  the  secret  history  of  the  heart :  all  else  is  so  much 
mere  preface  in  the  Book  of  Life. 


DESTINY  17 

It  is  the  perpetual  play  of  the  passions  that  gives  to  life 
its  perennial  Spring. 

And  hence,  however  old  or  worn  the  tale  or  dulled  by 
repetitions  that  resound  in  faint  and  fainter  accents  till 
lost  in  the  misty  Past,  with  its  mysterious  beginning  of 
things,  life  is  always  new  to  those  just  coming  up. 
For  each  generation,  the  earth  must  be  rediscovered.  It 
is  the  old  story  of  the  young  man's  first  sweetheart — 
never  such  before. 

flWe  refer  here  to  one  episode,  du  Barry.  Change  the 
name  to  Smith  or  Jones,  the  land  from  France  to  Amer- 
ica, as  you  will,  making  ten  thousand  combinations  of 
cities,  names,  dates,  years,  and  social  conditions.  Still 
the  main-spring  of  life  is  always  the  same. 
f[  The  gilded  du  Barry's  time  has  all  but  run  away ;  and 
to-day  she  is  in  the  cart,  on  the  way  to  the  guillotine. 
This  proud  beauty  is  now  leveled  to  the  mean  estate  of 
the  common  grisette.  Between  the  high  lights  and  her 
downfall,  in  one  form  or  in  another  form,  du  Barry's 
gayety  is  a  symbol.  Goethe  used  the  idea  in  "Faust," 
Strindberg  in  his  "Wanderings  of  Lucky-Per." 
It  is  true  that  du  Barry  is  this-and-that,  as  they  say,  but 
the  end  would  be  not  otherwise  were  she  head-milliner,  or 
veritable  Joan  of  Arc ;  the  important  point  is  that  nothing 
is  constant  save  change,  nothing  of  beauty,  glory  or  power 
but  must  perish. 

fl  There  comes  the  inevitable  day  when  Madam  la  Com- 
tesse  passes  forever  from  the  splendors  of  Versailles, 
into  exile  in  a  ruinous  old  building  with  bare  walls  and 
wooden  seats. 

Yet  in  her  time  Madam  la  Comtesse  had  been  veritable 
queen  of  France.  Come  to  Paris  in  a  cart,  this  village 
girl  by  the  very  audacity  of  her  talent  for  politics  and 
intrigue  became  King's  mistress,  and  thus  vastly  exer- 


i8  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

cised  her  day  of  glory  and  power:  how  well,  how  ill,  is 

not  for  us  to  recall  at  this  solemn  hour.     Enough  to 

know,  a  miserable  woman's  end  has  come! 

Of  a  sudden,  smallpox  lays  Louis  XV  low;  Madam's 

protector  is  gone ;  and  with  it  in  that  instant,  du  Barry's 

power. 

fl  Ah,  how  terribly  she  had  fought  to  keep  her  place,  but 

now  in  vain. 

For  years  she  had  put  down  her  enemies;  had  risen  to 

glory  against  a  high  tide  of  envy ;  she  had  shown  herself 

a  consummate  politician ;  mistress  of  card-stacking.    But 

she  was  destined  to  take  one  more  ride  in  the  cart.    The 

cart  was  it  seems  to  begin  and  to  end  her  career. 

fl  As  the  executioner  came  forward,  she  pleaded  for  just 

one  more  moment  of  life,  but  he  shook  his  head. 

fi  Like  a  flash  of  silver  the  axe  gleamed  through  the 

air.    Her  head  rolled  into  the  basket. 

fl  Soon  or  late,  the  inevitable.    Nothing  is  constant  save 

change,  nothing  of  beauty,  glory  or  power,  but  must 

perish. 

§       §       § 

fl  Through  centuries  of  tireless  repetition — from  peasant 
to  king,  from  queen  to  daughter  of  the  people — we  have 
love,  hate,  jealousy,  envy,  greed — and  on  and  on. 
We  know  by  a  thousand  instances  that  men  still  commit 
murder  for  jealous  love ;  that  since  the  distant  days  of 
Troy,  some  newly- found  fair  Helen  has  been  stolen  from 
her  surprised  husband  (she  was  willing  to  go),  and 
finally  that,  long  before  the  days  of  the  Iliad  men  butch- 
ered for  gold  or  lands. 

ff  Across  the  track  of  centuries,  from  the  time  when 
man  was  cave-dweller,  on  down  to  the  time  he  was 
sheep-herder,  and  on  to  the  days  when  he  first  tilled  land, 
following  on  down  to  the  era  of  soldier-conqueror,  and 


UNTO  GOING  DOWN  OF  SUN  19 

continuing  down  to  the  time  he  became  trader — down 
till  this  very  latest  hour,  when  man  is  inventor — to  this 
passing  moment,  man  is  as  he  is. 
Not  only,  is  as  he  is,  but  is  as  he  was. 
fi  We  are  talking  here  of  the  heart  in  an  endeavor  to 
make  clear  than  any  history  worthy  of  the  name  is,  after 
all,  but  a  record  of  human  nature,  in  action. 
ff  Thus  we  end  as  we  begun — with  the  everlasting  human- 
nature  elements  staring  us  in  the  face :  this  pride,  this 
envy,  this  greed,  this  jealousy,  this  love  of  gold,  this 
wolf's  heart,  with  here  and  there  the  few  softer  qualities 
that  men  applaud  because  of  very  rarity. 
For  you  to  know  man  as  he  is — should  that  ever  be  your 
vain  and  egotistical  hope ! — at  least  the  way  is  as  clear 
before  you  as  the  path  to  destruction,  that  broad  boule- 
vard leading  straight  ahead. 

fl  The  good  sword  gathers  rust,  the  knight's  bones,  no 
man  knows  their  last  resting  place,  but  by  the  measure 
of  vanity  all  things  human  are  still  reckoned,  unto  the 
going  down  of  the  sun. 

Do  not  let  us  deceive  ourselves.  Self-deception  is  the 
one  great  evil.  It  makes  real  progress  all  the  more  diffi- 
cult. 

fl  The  great  tomb-builder,  Time  (as  Byron  calls  Father 
Time),  keeps  up  his  century-old  work,  returning  races 
and  rulers  to  the  common  dust. 

For  empires  rise,  flourish  and  decay,  kings,  cutthroats, 
sages,  poets  and  mendicants  live  their  brief  hour  and 
are  forgotten ;  the  ancient  abbey  at  last  crumbles  to  ruin 
and  under  the  broken  arches  the  bat  finds  her  lair  and 
the  homeless  human  wretch  crawls  to  seek  shelter  from 
the  storm. 

Infinitely-slow  attritions  of  time  year  by  year  take  an 
almost  inperceptible  toll  of  dust  from  the  hard  stones; 


20  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

frost  cracks  the  rock,  rain  enters  the  crevices  which  at 
last  become  fissures  down  to  the  heart  of  the  stone: 
and  thus  even  seemingly  everlasting  granite  bowlders 
dissolve  and  are  known  no  more.  Then  the  flying  sands, 
after  centuries  of  ceaseless  and  cunning  labor  spread  the 
shroud:  till  the  traveler  of  that  distant  day  does  not 
even  pause  a  moment  to  study  the  spot  as  he  passes 
over  the  ruins  of  the  majestic  temple,  for  all  record  of 
it  has  passed  from  this  earth. 

§       §       § 

ft  And  still  is  the  human  story  told  in  these  three  words : 
fighting,  loving,  praying. 

Man  will  remain  man,  for  ever,  the  mental  attitudes  of 
all  historians  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding. 
The  new  type  of  biographer  and   historian,  therefore, 
should  occupy  himself   as   far   as  possible   in  studying 
the  secret  story  of  the  human  heart. 
All  else  is  so  much  mere  detail  in  the  Book  of  Life. 


IV 
FAGOTS  OF  JOAN  STILL  BLAZE 

fl  Behold  now,  rising  in  ghostly  vision  out  of  the 
dim  Past,  this  Witch  that  become  a  Saint:  and 
reflect  in  your  little  brain,  as  before  you  on  the 
screen  appears  the  trembling  and  uncertain  out- 
lines of  her  pathetic  face,  twisted  by  fire,  whether 
after  all  we  should  write  History  by  putting  man 
in,  or  by  leaving  him  out  .  .  .  ? 

fl  But  first  get  through  your  mind  a  fact  that  heretofore 
all  History  has  been  banded  to  suppress :  the  rawest 
truth  about  man  is  his  judgment  of  his  brother.  Where 
he  should  whiten,  he  befouls,  and  where  he  should  believe, 
he  scoffs. 

We  hear  a  frightful  din,  these  days  of  millions  of  mur- 
ders. The  bleat,  blab  and  cackle  is  about  man's  "manifest 
destiny,"  as  recorded  by  historians.  But  do  we  arrive 
at  this  conclusion  by  putting  man  in  the  history-thing, 
or  by  leaving  him  out? 

flUsed  from  childhood  to  think  of  the  "other  man" 
largely  from  the  way  that  man's  conduct  touches  our 
personal  comfort  or  profit,  we  find  ourselves  separated 
from  our  fellow-kind  by  such  things  as  food,  drink, 
houses,  clothing,  and  churches. 

No;  we  are  not  talking  about  Europe,  but  about  this 
Republic  of  ours,  wherein  we  do  daily  offer  up  many 

21 


22  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

official  utterances  of  righteousness,  accompanied  by  pious 
protests  of  equality  and  brotherhood,  sentiments  to  which 
we  burn  perpetual  incense. 

fl  There  has  always  been  much  difficulty  in  trying  to 
look  on  mankind  "as  a  unit."  Hence,  it  has  been  easier 
and  at  the  same  time  more  flattering  to  write  what  we 
call  our  history  by  leaving  man  out,  instead  of  putting 
him  where  he  belongs.  .  .  . 

fl  Man  was  man  long  before  he  was  politician,  preacher 
or  lawyer;  and  will  remain  man  long  after  the  race  of 
politicians,  preachers  and  law-givers  has  perished  from 
this  earth. 

Ideals  of  social  justice  as  between  Nations,  supply  abund- 
ant materials  for  July  4th  or  July  I4th  celebrations,  but 
the  enthusiasm  dies  before  the  cold  grey  dawn  of  the 
day  after. 

Do  we  really,  at  heart,  believe  in  the  Brotherhood,  over 
which  we  waste  so  much  ink,  preach  so  many  sermons, 
and  enact  so  many  laws? 

We  herald  the  theory  from  the  housetops,  shout  it  thru 
megaphones;  in  short,  we  will  do  everything  except  live 
it  in  our  daily  lives. 

§       §       §. 

fi  Even  in  those  days  men  shook  their  heads  solemnly, 
and  thanked  Heaven  that  they  were  not  like  Joan,  the 
lean  witch. 

Yes,  she  is  a  witch,  of  course  she  is :  and  good  riddance 
to  her. 

What,  she  saved  France  from  the  English  .  .  .   ? 
Why,  man,  that  woman  is  a  witch  I  tell  you ;  a  vile  witch, 
a  she-devil;  and  you  would  better  keep  away  or  she'll 
burn  you. 

fl  They  piled  the  fagots  high  and  her  life  yielded  to 
the  sacrifice  of  fire :  aye,  a  death  as  base  and  vile  as  ever 


TIME'S  REVENGE  23 

Truth  suffered  in  a  world  forever  bringing  Truth  to 
the  scaffold  or  to  the  stake. 

The  gruesome  spectacle  hadn't  even  the  merit-  of  novelty : 
for  witch-burning  was  not  half  as  sensational  as  feeding 
Christians  to  the  lions.  Whatever  Joan  may  have  been, 
at  least  she  was  no  "Christian."  Don't  you  see,  she  was 
only  a  "nominal"  Christian. 

It  seems  there's  a  stiff  difference,  somewhere;  for  in 
1914,  the  point  was  likewise  raised  as  between  real  and 
nominal  Christians,  in  the  prodigious  European  struggle. 
We  are  quite  sure  in  this  Republic  of  ours,  that  no 
Christians  were  guilty  of  such  acts  as  our  historians 
in  the  past  have  usually  suppressed. 
So,  likewise  in  Joan's  day. 

§     .§       § 
j[  Years  have  a  way  of  passing,  one,  ten,  one  hundred,  and 

on  and  on,  no  matter  what  man  does  to  his  brother. 

And  by  and  by,  his  brother's  time  comes,  tho  often  enough 

so  long-deferred  that  brother  has  fallen  asleep  on  the 

brown  bosom   of    Mother   Nature:   the  poor  heart  no 

longer  aches,  the  tears  are  dried  forever,  no  sound  can 

reach  him  more. 

All  that  remains  is  the  empty  echo  of  a  name. 

Another  generation  now  desires  to  go  on  record  that,  in 

other  years  a  great  wrong  was  done. 

fi  And  thus  it  eventually  chanced  for  Joan :  chanced  in 

the  inevitable  leveling  of  Time:  evil  passions  gone:  men 

seeing  more  clearly  because  no  longer  blind  to  the  fact 

that  all  flesh  is  of  the  Brotherhood. 

The  grass  has  grown  over  her  grave  ever  so  long.    Let 

us  think :  well,  upwards  of  five  hundred  years ;  but  at  last 

the  clock  struck  the  hour  for  her. 

flAt  St.  Peter's,  April  18,  1909,  before  45,000  French 

pilgrims,  the  beatification  of  Joan  took  place. 


24  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

To-day,  I  have  been  studying  a  celebrated  French  artist's 
spirited  record  of  the  impressive  scene. 
Immense  paintings  over  the  altar  depict  the  French  maid's 
heroic  sacrifices ;  and  Joan's  life-sized  effigy  is  there :  all 
veiled,  however,  awaiting  the  dramatic  moment  in  the 
Mass. 

fl  The  ceremony  began  by  the  reading  of  the  Brief ;  .  .  . 
and  at  the  final  word  the  veils  floated  away,  seemingly 
vanishing  in  a  miraculous  sea  of  light  .  .  .  the  immense 
altar  star-gemmed  with  innumerable  lights  .  .  .  and  at 
the  psychological  moment  Joan  herself  appeared  there, 
so  it  seemed,  against  the  background  of  celestial  dia- 
monds. 

The  bells  pealed,  the  massed  choirs  entoned  the 
TeDeum  ...  a  whole  city  was  at  prayer. 
Overcome  by  religious  ecstasies,  the  45,000  French  pil- 
grims, swept  off  their  feet  by  the  zeal  for  Joan's  presence, 
of  one  accord  burst  into  frantic  cheers  .  .  .  which,  how- 
ever, were  immediately  suppressed. 

§       §       § 
fl  Thus  closed  one  more  episode  in  the  century-deferred 

drama  summarizing  the  predestined  progress  of  the  Maid 
of  Orleans  toward  ultimate  canonization. 
We  say  predestined  .  .  .  and  we  mean  exactly  that. 
However,  not  predestined  in  any  dogmatic  or  creedal 
sense,  nor  yet  predestined  thru  the  so-called  "mysterious 
outworkings"  of  Providence  .  .  .  but  predestined  thru 
the  inevitable  littleness  of  man,  himself. 
fl  For  the  brand  of  Cain  on  man's  brow  is  not  there  be- 
cause he  killed  his  brother,  but  because  often  enough  500 
years  or  more  must  roll  away  before  he  is  even  aware  that 
he  has  transgressed.  In  spite  of  man's  late  retrievals,  of 
past  wrongs,  he  goes  on  century  after  century  dyeing  his 
hands  with  the  blood  of  one  ideal  after  the  other.  This 


MAN,  MYTH-MONGER  25 

marks  in  him  a  certain  innate  hypocrisy  that  up  to  the 
passing  moment  in  world-life,  our  philosophers  and  our 
historians,  in  their  scribblings,  have  not  dared  to  face. 
The  doom  of  it,  the  curse  of  it,  the  satire  of  it  is  found 
in  the  unavailing  substitution  of  words  for  deeds, 
fl  Thus,  in  the  far-off  years  that  no  man  is  to  know,  and 
of  which  no  man  is  to  care,  it  is  solemnly  decreed  that 
the  wrong  is  now  righted ;  and  the  curious  fact  to  be 
noted  is  that  often  centuries  elapse  before  man  is  pre- 
pared to  bow  his  brazen  brow  before  the  ruin  he  spread. 
A  crust  for  Joan  in  life  would  far  outweigh  the  golden 
crown  man  would,  some  centuries  later,  press  down  on 
the  grinning  skull. 

fl  The  world  will  yet  see  the  Alsatian  village  maid,  Jean 
le  Purselle,  who  yielded  her  life  to  the  sacrifice  of  fire, 
kindled  by  mad-men,  become  in  turn  Queen  of  the 
Church,  or  saint  as  they  say.  Also,  from  witch  to  saint 
in  secular  history-mongering. 

fl  Did  I  say  yielded  her  life,  victim  to  fagots  lit  by  bigots, 
or  mere  "nominal"  Christians? 

What  is  called  history,  as  written  by  the  human  animal, 
at  all  times  reserves  the  right  to  misunderstand  our 
brother,  and  to  make  restitution,  nobody  knows  when,  if 
ever. 

And  on  your  smaller  stage,  you  too,  no  doubt,  may  one 
day  be  idealized  beyond  the  knowing,  you  and  your  little 
breed,  little  as  you  are. 

§       §       § 

fl  Well,  what  was  she  then  ?  Even  as  you  or  I :  neither 
witch  nor  saint,  but  only  a  woman  more  sinned  against 
than  sinning;  living  and  dying  under  extraordinary  cir- 
cumstances .  .  .  till  at  last  she  has  indeed  become  a  myth, 
as  must  necessarily  be  under  the  ingenious  practices  of 
man,  the  myth-monger. 


26  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

ft  It  could  not  well  be  otherwise.  However,  the  time  comes 
when  the  frightful  wrong,  done  her  by  the  orcfeal  of  fire, 
demands  in  itself,  protest,  even  tho  protest  is  no  longer 
worth  while.  .  .  .  The  human  animal  may  always  be 
relied  upon  to  assume  excessively  pious  attitudes,  fol- 
lowing deeds  of  blood. 

And  finally,  men  fell  to  telling  folk-lore  about  her — just 
as  on  your  smaller  stage  you  idealize  beyond  the  knowing 
some  of  our  Americans  now  dead  and  gone, 
fl  Thus  time  and  chance  always  have  the  last  reckless 
roll  of  the  Dice  of  Destiny,  and  where  the  cubes  will 
tumble,  or  what  deuces  or  aces  they  will  turn  up,  no  man 
knows  to  this  hour. 

Joan's  story  affords  a  classical  instance  of  man's  cruelty 
and  blindness;  likewise  of  man's  enormous  egotism  in 
thinking  centuries  later  to  right  the  Past  by  ceremonials, 
written,  spoken  or  enacted. 

We  repeat,  the  brand  of  Cain  is  found  in  this :  that  man 
murders  and  knows  it  not  for  hundreds  of  years. 
Then,  he  rolls  up  his  eyes,  sniffs  a  bit  and  solemnly  pro- 
tests that  all's  well  with  our  race  because  of  the  Man 
that  died  on  the  Cross:  and  die  on  the  Cross  He  did, 
but  at  the  time  no  human  being  seemed  to  know  or  care. 
And  do  we  know  or  care,  even  to-day  ? 
fl  Hence,  this  amazing  spectacle :  Joan  in  time  is  no  longer 
a  she-devil.  The  human  elements  lose  their  native  iden- 
tity entirely,  in  belated  efforts  of  history-mongers  to  blot 
out  the  Past. 

For  the  Past  not  only  fades  like  a  dream,  but  the  Past 
is  indeed  a  strange  dream :  and  men  and  women  of  times 
past,  as  reported  hundreds  of  years  later,  in  what  man 
terms  "history,"  are  good  or  bad  beyond  all  human  beings 
now  alive:  till  men  become  demons  or  demi-gods. 
![[  Whose  story  are  we  to  believe  ? 


CORONATIONS  AND  CRUCIFIXIONS 

fl  Is  this,  then,  the  peculiar  sign  of  fitness  for  im- 
mortal renown,  as  measured  by  mankind:  that  in 
the  flesh  you  did  walk  this  world  friendless  and 
unknown,  a  Hero  of  Defeat:  aye,  that  dogs 
barked  at  your  rags  taking  you  for  a  pauper,  tho 
you  were  prince:  and  finally,  that  circumstances 
forced  you  to  make  a  mock  and  a  commodity  of 
your  art,  in  order  to  please  the  saloon-keepers 
of  Holland  .  .  .  f 

fl  Let  us  see  more  of  this  history-thing,  as  writ,  whether 
indeed  the  practice  has  been  to  put  man  in,  or  to  keep 
man  out  of  the  page;  and  more  especially  whether  the 
time  is  not  ripe  for  man  to  tell  the  stark  truth  about  him- 
self? 

ff  Whole  libraries  have  been  lavished  on  the  glories  of 
Rembrandt,  yet  in  his  life-time  there  was  scarcely  the 
scratch  of  a  pen  in  his  behalf. 

Likewise,  Nietzsche,  likewise  Lincoln  .  .  .  likewise  Bal- 
zac, likewise  Shakespeare  .  .  .  likewise  Columbus  .  .  . 
also,  hundreds  of  others. 

Nor  should  we  forget  the  case  of  Socrates  and 
Christ.  .  .  . 

fl  However,  believe  it  or  not,  history-mongers  have  amply 
provided  a  commodity  known  as  immortality,  otherwise 
the  irony  of  fame  after  death. 

27 


28  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

How  well  does  this  speak  for  history,  or  is  this  history- 
thing  merely  an  after-thought,  read  into  the  record  by 
men  who  knew  neither  the  actors,  the  immediate  scenes, 
nor  the  actual  conditions  ? 

fl  One  of  the  peculiarities  of  historical  and  biographical 
writing:  that  the  longer  a  man  is  dead,  the  more  is 
"known"  of  him :  altho  in  his  years  of  flesh  and  blood  he 
may  have  passed  thru  like  a  ghost.  Recall  in  this  con- 
nection the  vast  diligence  on  the  topic  "Shakespeare": 
for  Shakespeare,  even  for  biographical  purposes,  is  no 
longer  classed  as  a  human  being,  but  instead  is  regarded 
largely  as  "topic."  .  .  .  Whole  libraries  to  prove,  what- 
ever you  wish  to  prove,  forsooth.  That's  fair,  isn't  it? 
So  runs  this  world  away. 

fl  Also,  still  another  foundation-stone  in  historical  and 
biographical  method :  things  "too  near"  must  be  set  aside 
for  years,  at  least  till  all  the  actors  in  the  drama  are 
gone ;  their  mouths  stopped  by  death,  their  ears  and  eyes 
rotted  away,  their  hearts  a  lump  of  dust. 
Welcome  then  your  historical  hero :  make  of  him  what 
you  will,  without  fear  of  contradiction.  Who  cares? 

§       §       § 
fl  In  the  whirly-gig  of  history,  crucifixions  often  become 

coronations  and  vice  versa.  Squalid  neglect  during  a 
man's  life  is  usually  regarded  as  a  likely  sign  of  "mys- 
terious" preparation  for  the  higher  historical  destiny ; 
even  nailing  a  Man  to  a  Cross  is  interpreted  as  helpful  to 
those  who  are  to  come  after  .  .  .  and  therefore  such 
episodes  "must"  be  important  to  the  man  himself ! 
fl  Worthy  material  for  history  ! 

j[  In  short,  if  the  historical  character  were  neglected  or 
forgotten  by  his  own  so  short-sighted  time,  the  explana- 
tion is  that  the  "point  of  view"  was  not  right,  but  later 
the  forgotten  man  becomes  a  demi-god. 


FOLLY  OF  FAME  AFTER  DEATH    29 

Altho  this  may  not  be  a  credit  to  our  intelligence  as  human 
animals,  at  least  it  is  helpful  to  us.  "Because,"  we  are 
informed,  "history  is  philosophy  teaching  by  examples." 
fl  For  a  moment  let  us  believe  that  this  famous  definition 
is  founded  on  other  than  quicksand:  and  therefore  let 
us  confine  our  momentary  gaze  to  a  pathetic  figure,  Rem- 
brandt. There  are  scores  of  others,  but  in  this  history- 
thing,  the  case  of  Rembrandt  will  suffice;  for  it  will 
show  whither  we  are  led  in  this  business  of  historical 
fame,  after  death. 

§       §       § 
|f  With  all  due  respect  for  this  historical  incense-burning 

for  the  "preeminent  glory  of  Dutch  art"  as  expressed  in 
the  "Night  Watch,"  it  is  questionable  whether  Rem- 
brandt's generation  knew  or  cared  a  fig.  The  man  him- 
self rounded  out  his  career  chalking  cartoons  on  the  side- 
walk. 

To-day,  some  hundreds  of  years  after  Rembrandt's  death, 
our  library  shelves  are  freighted  with  history-things  on 
the  "Night  Watch" :  its  mystery,  its  witchery,  its  wonder, 
its  profundity,  its  demi-god  qualities.  The  "tone,"  es- 
pecially, is  dwelt  on  as  well-nigh  a  miracle,  whereas  in 
plain  fact  in  this  respect  the  artist  was  not  the  Dutchman, 
but  Father  Time. 

fl  To-day,  when  the  name  Rembrandt  is  mentioned  it 
must  be  spoken  with  uplifted  eyes :  you  must  lower  your 
voice,  for  he  is  forsooth  the  peculiar  "glory"  of  Dutch  art. 
Yet  we  can  imagine,  should  a  murmur  of  this  over-praise 
penetrate  the  silence  of  his  tomb,  his  fishy  eyes  seeing 
vacantly  after  some  centuries  of  blindness,  his  dulled 
sense  of  hearing  once  more  catching  an  echo  from  the 
world  of  living  men,  this  lonesome  corpse,  we  repeat,  for 
the  moment  a  man  again,  would  not  know  himself,  nor 
yet  the  peculiar  after-glory  that  enshrines  his  name. 


30  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

He  himself  of  all  mortals  would  be  the  most  surprised, 
and  would  exclaim :  "Can  this  be  me  ?  Or  is  it  some  new 
form  of  mockery,  now  that  the  world  has  had  time  to 
think  up  new  punishments?  Let  me  fall  asleep  again: 
for  it  is  all  a  terrifying  dream,  even  more  hideous  than 
were  my  closing  days  on  earth." 

|f  Alas,  it  is  too  true :  the  man,  Rembrandt,  has  been 
merged  into  the  "topic,"  Rembrandt;  and  being  now 
purely  impersonal  we  make  such  shift  as  pleases  us  in 
our  history-thing. 

|f  Therefore,  the  man  Rembrandt  could  not  grasp  our 
high-flown  modern  mockeries  that  pass  for  appreciation : 
for  the  simple  reason  that  there  was  no  such  man  as  we 
amplify  in  our  exercises  in  historical  imagination. 
|f  However,  even  this  historical  absurdity  is  of  value,  for 
it  exposes  our  pet  history-thing  in  a  new  light.  A  study 
of  the  psychology  behind  our  waxen-image  Rembrandt 
enables  us  to  learn  a  thing  or  two  of  the  littleness  of 
men's  ways;  and  we  grasp  likewise  the  importance  of 
writing  history — by  leaving  the  man  out! 
|f  Off-hand,  the  present  writer  knows  no  more  pathetic 
figure  (no  more  mysterious  figure),  than  this  self-same 
artist-no-artist,  as  you  will,  unless  it  be  the  Thief  dying 
on  the  Cross :  for  the  principle  of  historical  judgment  is 
parallel. 

Which  is  to  say :  Rembrandt's  after-death  fame  and  the 
Thief's  after-death  fame  find  fixed  places  in  the  history- 
thing,  side  by  side. 

In  the  case  of  the  Thief,  this  miserable  creature,  this 
pathetic  human  life,  is  now  interpreted  to  mean  some- 
thing (we  know  not  what)  that  makes  for  the  perpetual 
after-glory  of  mankind ;  calling  this  Thief's  end  sublime, 
yet  in  life  denouncing  him  as  a  thief. 
If  you  can  leap  the  logical  gulf  and  still  retain  your 


WITH  ALL  HIS  CRUDITIES  31 

self-respect,  you  are  a  worthy  disciple  of  the  history- 
thing,  as  writ. 

§       §       § 

fl  Before  Rembrandt's  death,  frost  fell  on  his  excellent 
reputation  as  an  historical  painter;  he  had  had  his  brief 
acclaim,  likewise  his  gold  coins  for  his  work :  but  all  this 
after-cackle,  all  this  brazen-trumpetry,  this  nauseating 
over-praise  about  the  "Night  Watch,"  these  mystical 
meanings  as  to  the  man's  life  and  the  man's  artistic  intui- 
tions, as  expressed  in  the  familiar  phrases  of  art-mong- 
ers and  history  mongers:  this  national  self -hypnotism, 
dazzling  our  minds  like  some  bright  ball  that  puzzles  us 
and  leads  us  captive,  is  a  self -constructed  situation  labor- 
iously built-up. 

fl  So  much  for  your  history-thing,  wherein  we  substitute 
a  "topic"  for  flesh  and  blood. 

It  might  as  well  be  a  veritable  Rogue's  March  that  we 
are  recording  .  .  .  for  the  distinction  between  the 
Rogue's  March  and  history  as  recorded  is  not  so  much 
as  the  width  of  a  sheet  of  paper. 

fl  The  great  work  of  the  future  will  be,  in  this  field,  to 
write  history  by  putting  man  in  the  pages ;  and  we  insist 
on  his  right  to  be  there,  yes,  with  all  his  crudities,  his 
blood-lusts  and  his  blood-taints :  for  only  by  so  doing 
will  we  be  able  to  look  ourselves  in  the  eye  and  decide 
whether  we  are  pleased  with  the  picture.  Heretofore, 
we  have  been  pampering  and  flattering  ourselves  to  death, 
always  setting  up  that  we  are  mightily  concerned  about 
our  relations  to  our  brother:  but  Winter  is  coming  on, 
and  what  stored  grain  is  there  in  the  barn? 
Have  our  over-inflated  lying  accounts  of  ourselves,  in  this 
history-thing,  really  done  us  any  good?  Do  we  know 
ourselves  as  we  are,  as  individuals,  or  as  nations? 
Then  why  so  much  care  that  facts  may  be  censored  ? 


32  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

j[  The  critics  tell  us  that  Rembrandt  is  a  great  church- 
man in  disguise,  whose  artistic  ideal  was  essentially 
religious;  others,  that  he  aimed  to  be  the  supreme  psy- 
chologist; others,  the  master-craftsman;  others,  the 
inspired  preacher;  and  still  others  read  into  the  "topic" 
Rembrandt  all  manner  of  god-like  virtues :  whereby  we 
bolster  up  our  conception  of  a  great  man. 
|f  Do  not  deceive  yourself !  While  you  and  I  rave  over 
great  men,  it  is  a  question  whether  we  know  a  great  man 
when  we  see  him ;  and  if  so,  by  what  signs  ? 
j[  Heroes  of  defeat,  one  and  all,  these  Immortals,  their 
lives  an  indictment  of  man's  absurd  judgments  of  his 
brother;  till  at  last  the  practice  is  after  some  centuries 
of  neglect  to  rush  to  the  other  extreme  and  to  cover  the 
stone  with  laurel  wreaths,  not  forgetting  mourning  cards 
bearing  carefully  penned  mottoes  of  affectionate  historical 
regard. 

§       §       § 

fl  In  Rembrandt's  case  the  plain  fact  seems  to  be  that 
taste  in  paint-daubing  had  changed ;  and  the  old  Jew-heads 
and  Jew-figures,  counting  their  gold  coins,  those  vivid 
portraits  from  the  ghetto,  done  in  Rembrandt's  bold  style, 
were  now  to  fall  from  favor ;  to  be  replaced  by  a  smooth 
microscopic  method  very  pleasing  to  the  fickle  public  of 
Rembrandt's  later  years. 

Hence  the  old  man  was  forgotten:  and  our  old  fool  or 
our  old  master  (as  you  will),  rounded  out  his  career 
scratching  cartoons  at  the  curb  for  a  drink  and  a  snack. 
fl  For  men  must  warm  their  bellies  three  times  a  day, 
with  food  and  drink,  but  their  minds  need  only  such 
nourishment  as  the  chalked-cartoon  at  the  curb.  To-day, 
after  some  centuries,  he  is  termed  the  "preeminent  glory 
of  Dutch  art,"  this  self-same  lonesome  old  man  who  pros- 
tituted his  powers  for  a  pot.  Were  they  right  when  they 


SETTLED  ORDER  DEMANDED  33 

left  him  there,  or  are  we  in  our  turn  fanatical  when  we 
name  him  Immortal? 

fl  Who  knows  or  cares  ...  ?  It  should  be,  sir,  sufficient 
to  know  that  what  this  Earth  demands  is  settled  order; 
and  quite  naturally  she  has  standardized  her  methods  of 
historical  and  biographical  writing.  Sir,  why  not? 


VI 

WHAT  IS  THIS  THING  CALLED  "GREAT"? 

ff  The  barking  of  a  dog,  the  swelling  of  a  brook, 
the  changing  of  the  wind — such  are  some  of  the 
frail  tools  of  destiny!  How  great  men  are 
brought  forward. 

fl  It  has  been  shown,  time  and  time  again,  that  accident 
and  opportunity  have  had  much  to  do  with  bringing  for- 
ward "our  greatest  men,"  as  they  are  usually  called  in 
the  history-scribbles. 

Yes,  even  Death  is  an  important  helper:  for  mark  you 
this,  that  on  the  ladder  of  life,  right  behind  you  is  always 
the  man  coming  up,  crowding  for  your  place. 
If  he  does  not  actually  pass  you  by,  in  the  scramble,  he 
may  decide  that  no  harm  will  be  done  if  he  knocks  you 
off. 

Do  not  take  this  too  seriously.  Brush  the  dust  off  your 
coat,  mend  your  bruises  as  best  you  may,  and  thank 
Heaven  that  no  bones  were  broken. 
Console  yourself  with  the  reflection  that  in  turn  the 
bully  that  beat  you  to  the  top  of  the  wall  will  soon  lose 
his  place.  In  the  eternal  conflict  of  defenders  and  be- 
siegers, a  spear  will  pierce  his  body,  bringing  him  tum- 
bling into  the  moat  below. 

It  matters  little  the  means :  the  end  is  inevitable, 
fi  Such  is  the  human  animal,  at  play. 

34 


LITTLE-BIG  AND  BIG-LITTLE  35 

ff  "Reputation,"  says  Albert  de  Montbiliard,  son  of  the 
Shiek  of  Sahara  and  my  personal  friend,  "reputation  has 
often  come  to  mortal  on  blind  chancs ;  in  this  connection 
recall  that  the  date  seed  dropped  from  the  bill  of  a  flying 
dove  finds  lodgment  in  a  fertile  spot;  the  lucky  kernel 
after  a  time  becomes  a  tiny  green  sprout,  and  in  the  ful- 
ness of  the  years  flourishes  for  another  generation  as  the 
mighty  monarch  of  the  oasis,  admired  by  all." 

§       §       § 
flTwo  notable  generals  of  our  Civil  War,  Grant  and 

Sherman,  were  in  their  earlier  career  so  disgusted  with 
the  military  career  and  its  seemingly  hopeless  chance  for 
advance  in  times  of  peace,  that  they  resigned  from  the 
service;  but  later  they  rose  to  fame,  thru  the  accident 
of  the  great  Rebellion.  The  coming  of  the  war,  by  the 
way,  was  due  to  circumstances  with  which  neither  Grant 
nor  Sherman  had  only  the  remotest  personal  connec- 
tion. 

Had  not  the  interminable  debates  of  Abolitionists  stirred 
up  the  final  strife,  Grant  might  have  continued  a  tanner, 
Sherman  a  schoolmaster,  to  the  bitter  end. 
fl  Therefore,  we  repeat,  in  estimating  "what"  a  man  rep- 
resents, who  is  to  decide?  Out  of  all  the  seeds  in  his  Bag 
of  Life,  just  which  were  the  ones  that,  scattered  widely, 
did  indeed  take  root :  also,  tell  me  likewise  which  of  the 
innumerable  fair  seeds  died  of  the  cut-worm,  the  crow, 
or  perished  in  the  starved  soil  .  .  .  ? 
fl  We  think  we  know,  but  it  is  only  another  form  of  our 
conceit.  I  have  known  men  rise  in  life  to  greatness,  as 
the  history-mongers  reckon,  thru  so  simple  an  oppor- 
tunity as  comes  by  an  unexpected  fall  of  rain.  Remem- 
ber, had  it  not  rained  the  night  before,  at  Waterloo,  the 
cannon  would  not  have  stalled  in  muddy  and  impassible 
roads ;  and  now  enters  that  great  man,  Wellington. 


36  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

I  have  numerous  other  instances  in  mind,  such  as  the 
changing  of  the  wind,  the  barking  of  a  dog,  the  slipping 
of  a  horse,  yes,  the  actual  mis-reading  of  a  message. 
And  to  this  hour,  the  photo-play  director  utilizes  exactly 
these,  and  others,  in  working  out  life-stories  on  the 
screen. 

fl  These  caprices,  as  we  call  them,  coming  at  a  moment 
when  their  far-reaching  importance  was  not  clear,  in 
turn  intermeshed  with  other  vital  circumstances  no  man 
could  read  or  know  at  the  time,  but  ended  by  bringing 
forth  still  another  great  reputation, 
fl  Or,  taking  the  reverse  side,  it  is  not  inconceivable  that 
the  coward  has  more  than  once  been  acclaimed  a  notable 
hero,  the  sinner  a  saint,  the  seducer  the  guardian  of 
woman's  virtue,  the  traitor  a  genuine  patriot, 
fi  Why  not  ...   ? 

fl  For  it  is  the  common  practice  of  mankind  to  place  little 
men  in  high  and  commanding  positions,  for  the  time 
being  turning  aside  the  efficient  or  capable.  The  rarest 
talent  of  all  is  to  recognize  a  good  man  when  you  see 
him:  and  the  one  black  indictment  of  the  cheap  and 
nasty  money-success  is  to  say  simply,  "He  never  helped 
any  other  man  to  rise." 

§       §       § 
fl  Not  many  years  ago,  Gen.  Wm.  Booth,  founder  of  the 

Salvation  Army,  was  repeatedly  rotten-egged  in  the  streets 

of  London. 

Yet  he  lived  to  be  reverently  referred  to  as  "England's 

Grand  Old  Man,"  and  in  his  travels  was  the  guest  of 

kings. 

ff  Were  they  right,  or  are  we  wrong  ? 

j[  Carlyle  hawked,  "Sartor  Resartus,"  only  to  place  it  in 

a  second-rate  magazine. 

ft  Were  they  right,  or  are  we  wrong? 


VALOR  OF  IGNORANCE  37 

ff  Henry  George's  message,  "Progress  and  Poverty,"  com- 
posed under  depressing  conditions,  was  offered  here  and 
there,  but  no  editor  or  publisher  saw  any  merit. 
A  sympathetic  fellow-printer  put  it  in  type,  and  John 
Russell  Young  peddled  a  few  copies  in  London.    "I  tried 
to  throw  them  away,"  writes  Young,  "but  at  last,  through 
unexpected  sources  the  great  work  was  recognized,  and 
soon  followed  60,000  copies  a  year." 
ft  Were  they  right,  or  are  we  wrong  ? 

§       §       § 
ft  Old  examples  are  wholly  as  good  as  those  under  your 

nose.  Recall  then  that  "Paradise  Lost"  brought  Milton 
five  pounds ;  and  put  yourself  on  the  defensive  to  explain 
the  stupidity  of  the  wise. 

ff  Wordsworth  confessed  to  Matthew  Arnold,  "My  dear 
Arnold  you  talk  of  the  peculiar  glory  of  the  poetic  art, 
as  exemplified  by  the  support  of  the  British;  but  let  me 
whisper  something  in  your  ear.  For  years  past,  sir,  my 
poetry  has  never  brought  me  enough  to  pay  for  my  shoe- 
laces." 

fl  Nor  should  we,  while  speaking  of  the  satire  of  success, 
fail  to  recall  that  "Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,"  in  spite  of  its 
world-wide  fame  in  one  language  after  the  other  (Eng- 
lish, German,  Chinese,  and  we  know  not  what),  still  was 
originally  absolutely  refused  by  publisher  after  pub- 
lisher. 

No  white  American  at  that  time  recognized  any  merit 
in  the  story  or  its  telling.  Decidedly,  however,  this  nar- 
rative had  a  profound  impression,  hastening  the  Re- 
bellion. 

So  much  for  our  human  blindness  in  reading  the  future, 
or  in  knowing  a  great  woman  writer  when  she  was  act- 
ually before  our  noses, 
fl  We  also  have  it  from  his  own  record  that  Hawthorne, 


38  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

now  esteemed  the  blue-white  diamond  in  our  collection 
of  American  literary  gems,  "was  for  years  the  obscurest 
literary  man  in  America.  There  is  no  market  for  my 
wares,"  he  added. 

fl  Thoreau,  another  great  American  literary  idol,  was  no 
exception  to  the  rule  of  our  ignorance  of  human  values. 
A  thousand  copies  of  his  "Week  On  the  Concord  and 
Merrimac  Rivers"  were  struck  off  by  his  publisher.  After 
a  year,  the  author  received  word  that  his  work  would 
not  sell,  and  that  seven  hundred  and  six  copies  were  oc- 
cupying cellar-room  wanted  for  other  use. 
fl  Accordingly,  they  were  transported  from  Boston  to 
Concord.  The  work  had  gone  forth  in  its  nakedness  and 
now  returned  in  fine  clothing  of  calico  and  leather,  back 
to  the  old  homestead,  as  so  many  poor  unfortunates  who 
have  failed  in  the  struggle  of  life. 

fl  Thoreau  gave  them  kindly  though  sorrowful  welcome. 
He  laid  them  on  his  back  and  carried  them  "up  two  flights 
of  stairs  to  a  place  similar  to  that  which  they  traced 
their  origin." 

fl  "I  have  now  a  library  of  nearly  nine  hundred  volumes," 
he  said  with  grim  humor,  "over  seven  hundred  of  which 
I  wrote  myself." 

§      §      § 

ff  Man,  ignorant  and  innocent  in  judging  his  fellow,  tries 
to  fortify  himself  by  freely  using  labels. 
fl"Is   he   a   college  man?"     "Who   was   his   mother?" 
"What  Church  does  he  belong  to  ?"    "What  is  his  politi- 
cal party  ?" 

fl  Somehow,  after  Edwin  Arnold  said  that  Joaquin  Miller 
and  Edgar  Allen  Poe  were  America's  greatest  poets, 
somehow,  that  very  statement  made  a  difference,  and 
somehow  people  began  to  see  where  they  were  in  dark- 
ness before. 


FOOL'S    REVENGE  39 

'[Why  was  this? 

f  Somehow,  many  years  after  Goodyear  invented  the 
rubber  process,  which  has  done  so  much  to  help  mankind 
to  larger  comfort,  safety  of  life  and  limb  and  utilities 
unnumbered,  somehow  then  and  only  then  did  the  idea 
dawn  that  Goodyear,  the  former  fool,  should  have  a  mag- 
nificent monument,  as  a  benefactor  of  his  race.  It  need 
scarcely  be  added  that  Goodyear,  at  this  time  was  dead 
and  passed  all  need  of  praise.  In  life,  when  he  asked  for 
bread,  they  said  he  was  daffy. 
fl  Why  was  this  ? 

fl  Somehow,  after  LaFollette  had  for  years  been  called 
a  bigot  and  a  fool,  a  man  not  to  be  trusted,  somehow  it 
came  to  pass  that  the  things  he  preached  on  the  floor  of 
the  Senate  (and  usually  in  the  good  old  days  received 
there  as  an  impertinence),  were  later  welcomed  as  bring- 
ing in  a  new  day. 

§      §       § 

fl  The  irony  of  man's  judgment  of  his  fellow  mortal :  who 

is  to  decide  "what"  you  represent,  or  having  decided 

may  not,  the  following  moment,  change  his  mind  and 

decide  in  still  another  way. 

So  wearisome  is  the  recital,  so  dull,  so  stupid,  that  the 

judgment  of  half  the  race  on  the  other  half  may  well 

justify  the  ironical  phrase  used  by  Balzac  in  describing 

his  serious  life-work,  "The  Comedy  of  Human  Life." 

ft  We  pass  in  silence  that  classical  instance  of  man's 

blundering  stupidity  in  estimating  human  values,  the  case 

of  Columbus. 

They  called  him  "Mad  Man." 

They  put  him  in  a  dungeon  and  forgot  him. 

To  Civilization's  shame,  the  very  place  of  this  heroic 

sufferer's   sepulchre  is  to  this  hour  unknown,   despite 

various  spurious  allegations  of  fact,  marked  by  piles 


4°  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

of  masonry  scattered  from  the  Windward  Islands  to 

Old  Spain. 

Mankind,  in  the  great  navigator's  day,  regarded  Colum- 

bus's  work  as  not  of  sufficient  importance  to  do  him  the 

mean  honor  even  of  preserving  his  dust  and  marking  the 

spot  in  a  grudged  cranny  in  a  wall  .  .  .   ! 

fl  Why  was  this  ? 

Have  done  with  your  laborious  explanations.     Consider 

instead  the  brute  fact  of  human  brag  contrasted  with 

human  blindness. 

How  times  change,  how  man's  view  of  his  brother  change 

with  the  times.    To-day  Columbus's  fame  is  forever  fixed. 

The  crucifixion  of  the  cell  has  given  to  the  coronation  of 

the  historian.    Too  late — his  heart  is  dust! 

fl  So  much  for  the  worth  of  hypocrisies  of  history,  set  up 

to  cover  our  ignorance  of  human  values. 

We  simply  do  not  know  a  good  man  when  he  is  right 

before  our  eyes:  and  our  pretense  to  the  contrary  is 

merely  a  preachment  inspired  by  pride  of  intellect. 

The  difference  between  a  wise  man  and  a  fool  ?  Scarcely 

greater  than  the  width  of  your  hand ! 


VII 
LIFE'S  AMAZING  IRONY 

^Before  the  new  monument  a  new  generation, 
blind  to  the  mockery  of  it  all,  submissively  kneels 
in  worship.  Such  is  life's  amazing  irony. 

fl  Now  that  we  are  talking  about  great  strength  and  great 
weakness  it  is  well  to  say  something  of  the  vague  word, 
"great."  No  man  is  wise  enough  to  offer  a  comprehen- 
sive definition  of  "greatness." 

flA  man  must  have  strong  character  to  face  the  blows 
of  fate.  The  world  is  so  selfish  that  it  does  not  know 
who  is  trying  to  help  along. 

fl  Does  the  world  know  a  great  man  when  it  sees  him, 
and  if  so,  pray  by  what  signs? 

Blackstock,  the  American  Corot,  driven  insane  by  pov- 
erty, passed  years  in  an  asylum;  Keats,  whose  fair  fame 
is  fixed  forever  more,  yet  at  twenty-six  died  victim  to 
hunger;  America  first  learned  of  Poe  second-hand,  Ger- 
many and  England  pointing  the  way;  Whitman  had  to 
print  his  own  books,  even  to  setting  the  type ;  Hawthorne 
eked  out  a  living  doing  political  odd- jobs;  Meredith 
starved  for  many  a  year  on  oatmeal,  and  was  over  sixty 
before  England  knew  his  great  mind ;  Matthew  Arnold 
wrote  some  of  his  finest  work  on  scraps  of  paper  as  he 
traveled  around  Britain  on  railroad  trains,  and  nobody 
knew  or  cared  for  many  years;  Goldsmith  had  to  be 

41 


42  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

rescued  from  a  debtors'  prison,  and  was  dust  before 
England  awoke  to  his  genius;  Johnson,  to  pay  his 
mother's  funeral  expenses,  sat  up  all  night  writing  "Ras- 
selas" ;  Schiller,  hunted  like  a  rat  from  hole  to  hole,  dared 
to  slip  out  only  after  dark  to  nibble  cheese;  Mozart  was 
buried  in  a  pauper's  grave;  Beethoven  had  nothing  but 
his  art  to  save  him  from  suicide  at  his  country's  ingrati- 
tude and  neglect;  Schubert,  starving  cheerfully,  was 
helped  by  one  friend  who  -paid  for  pens  and  paper, 
another  who  contributed  the  room-rent,  still  another  who 
sent  cast-off  clothes ;  Wagner,  long  an  exile  from  Ger- 
many, his  art  scoffed  at  and  held  valueless,  is  to-day  ac- 
claimed the  peculiar  wonder  of  German  musical  genius. 
And  so  it  goes ! 

§       §       § 
fl  There  is  also  the  true  greatness  that  stands  as  a  rock 

and  is  known  as  integrity. 

flWhen  they  offered  to  make  Washington  king,  he  re- 
fused, for  his  battle  was  for  the  Republic;  and  of  the 
thousands  of  men  who  walk  this  earth  to-day,  sounding 
in  public  places  hollow  words  for  the  Republic,  and  pos- 
ing as  the  friend  of  the  people,  the  bribe  of  king  would 
be  too  much  to  be  set  aside. 

fl  They  would  surely  fall  before  the  temptation  and  in 
that  moment  of  personal  power  forget  the  cause  of  the 
people. 

fl  But  the  fable  is  that  Washington  refused  to  be  made 
king — and  his  fame  will  live. 

§       §       § 
If  In  a  world  of  little  men,  there  is  another  use  of  the 

word  "great."  It  applies  to  a  life  spent  in  struggles 
against  powerful  wrongs ;  and  in  this  hard  school  are 
many  whose  names  will  never  be  recorded  in  Halls  of 
Fame,  but  for  all  that  their  work  has  not  been  in  vain. 


HEROES  OF  DEFEAT  43 

jf  There  are  also  the  wise  men  who  by  their  firmness  for 
right  and  justice  set  about  it  to  bring  what  are  called 
reforms  in  society.  We  refer  to  martyrs  like  John  Brown, 
the  fanatic  for  the  slave ;  Socrates,  drinking  the  hemlock ; 
Marius,  at  the  ruins  of  Carthage. 

fl  Their  paths  are  stony  and  it  is  well  with  them  if  they 
escape  the  lash  or  the  gallows,  for  the  blind  world  has 
long  before  this  stoned  its  great  men  to  death  for  their 
opinions — and  many  years  later,  has,  as  has  been  so  beau- 
tifully said,  "gathered  up  the  stones  and  builded  them 
into  a  magnificent  monument."  Yes,  with  orations, 
bands  of  music,  soldiers,  bells  ringing,  and  joy  far  and 
wide  through  lands. 

fl  In  this  grotesque  reversal  of  opinion,  man  sees  no  in- 
consistency. He  is  too  conceited  for  that. 

§       §       § 
fl  Matthew  suffered  martyrdom,  by  the  sword. 

j[  Mark,  dragged  through  the  streets  of  Alexandria,  ex- 
pired a  victim  to  the  brutality  of  the  mob. 
fl  In  Greece,  Luke  was  hanged  on  an  olive  tree. 
j[  John,  put  in  a  cauldron  of  boiling  oil,  at  Rome,  escaped 
and  later  died  a  natural  death  at  Ephesia. 
ff  James  the  Great  was  beheaded. 

j[  James  the  Less  was  thrown  from  a  pinnacle  of  the 
temple,  and  beaten  to  death  with  a  fuller's  club. 
fl  Phillip  was  hanged  up  against  a  pillar  at  Hierapolis, 
a  city  of  Phrygia. 
fl  Bartholomew  was  flayed  alive. 

j|  Andrew,  bound  to  a  cross,  preached  to  the  people  till 
he  expired. 

fl  Thomas  was  run  through  the  body  with  a  lance. 
jf  Jude  was  shot  to  death  with  arrows. 
j[  Simeon  Zealotes  was  crucified,  and  the  place  was  Persia. 
Matthias  was  first  stoned  and  then  beheaded. 


44  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

fl  Peter  was  crucified,  with  his  head  downwards. 
j[  Paul,  the  last  and  chief  of  the  apostles,  died  of  violence. 
jj  So  much   for  man's   judgment  of   his   fellow-mortal, 
and  his  conception  of  the  word  "great."    Life's  amazing 
irony ! 


VIII 
THE  WREATH  OF  CYPRESS 

ft  When  you  are  dead,  it  will  make  little  differ- 
ence to  you  what  is  said  of  you,  and  mankind 
sees  no  inconsistency  in  the  bleat  of  words. 

flHow  little  man  is  able  to  estimate  justly  the  work  of 
his  fellow-man  is  seen  in  many  ways ;  but  in  none  more 
astonishing  than  in  the  attitude  of  the  living  toward 
the  living. 

fl  Whenever  the  suggestion  is  made  that  a  comprehen- 
sive biography  be  penned  of  some  leader  of  the  hour, 
the  usual  answer  is,  "A  just  and  life-like  portrait,  aiming 
to  depict  without  prejudice  a  contemporary,  is  impossible. 
The  thing  to  do  is  to  wait  till  he  is  dead !" 
fl  That  mankind  elects  to  wait  till  the  man  is  dead  before 
writing  his  history  is  at  once  an  indictment  of  the  living 
and  a  satire  on  the  tomb. 

ff  Yes,  when  his  lips  are  dumb,  his  eyes  closed,  his  ears 
hear  no  more,  his  whole  being  fallen  under  the  midnight 
of  impersonality,  in  the  ground,  then  it  is  that  we  come 
forth  with  our  estimates,  our  memoirs  and  our  apprecia- 
tions. 

fl  But  you  ask,  why  all  this  delay  ? 

j|  The  fierce  struggles  of  ambition,  intrigue  and  blood- 
shed disclose  that  the  foregoing  condition  is  inevitable. 

45 


46  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

ff  Men  have  curious  words  of  felicitation  for  the  dead, 
for  the  dead  being  effaced  from  the  competitions  of  life, 
death  silences  malicious  tongues. 

fl  The  man  that  now  measures  his  length  in  the  insensate 
sod,  this  man  is  now  beyond  all  human  praises,  or  their 
need. 

fl  Not  even  the  vilest  human  beast  envies  the  slim  green 
estate,  six  feet  long  and  elbow-wide. 
fl  Kind  thoughts  are  kindled  on  the  altar  of  memory 
mounting  as  a  sacred  flame  of  praise, 
fl  As  time  passes,  the  man's  real  traits,  weaknesses  and 
follies  merge  more  and  more  into  the  encircling  gloom. 
flAt   last   History,   after   the   Rembrandt   style   of   art, 
pierces  the  dark  with  a  core  of  light,  leveled  on  one  spot 
only,  bringing  it  into  vivid  relief. 

fl  Or,  time  passing  more  and  more,  the  years  giving  to 
decades,  the  decades  to  centuries,  an  image  is  erected  of 
colossal  size,  a  myth-man,  whose  like  never  walked  this 
earth. 

fl  Hearing  the  strange  story  second-hand,  another  gener- 
ation, comes  close,  falls  down  and  worships  before  this 
superman;  and  being  on  their  knees  and  in  a  strained 
position,  naturally  the  statue  is  immensely  foreshortened — 
till  it  looms  upward  to  the  skies! 


IX 
HISTORY  TEACHES  MAN  NOTHING 

ft  Our  history-things,  with  pretense  to  smug  offic- 
ialism, not  to  say  righteousness  in  our  National 
utterances,  constantly  remind  us  that  the  sun  is 
high  in  the  Heavens  and  that  we  are  on  the  for- 
ward march:  but  may  we  not  still  be  asleep  in 
our  beds,  our  minds  a  bat's  cave  of 
'dreams  .  .  .  ? 

ft  We  prate  of  the  lessons  of  history,  at  the  same  moment 
doing  all  in  our  power  to  conceal  thru  our  historical- 
things  the  realities  of  life.    They,  pray,  what  is  the  func- 
tion of  the  old-line  history-scribble? 
\  We  prate  of  the  lessons  of  history,  but  are  there  les- 
sons beyond  this :  that  man  is  as  he  is  ? 
We  have  read  history  in  tale,  poem,  moving-picture,  news- 
paper-column, and  on  stones  in  the  cemetery:  and  it  is 
all  alike. 

Man  likes  to  set  forth  in  his  official  utterances  that,  thru 
devotion  to  the  social  order,  human  beings  are  gradually 
ceasing  to  be  human  beings,  substituting  for  flesh  and 
blood  certain  physical  and  mental  euphemisms  wherein 
no  brash  word  betrays  the  under-surface  of  life  as  act- 
ually lived,  as  against  the  literary  methods  used  to  pre- 
sent life  in  books  and  documents. 
This  indictment  includes  also  the  singular  record  of  our 

47 


48  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

official  righteousness,  as  set  forth  in  the  President's  Mes- 
sage, apropos  of  our  "humanity"  in  the  sale  of  munitions. 
fl  And  all  this  weird  historical-thing  persists  in  the  face 
of  the  fact  that  man  continues  to  repeat,  generation  after 
generation,  the  essential  qualities  of  human  nature,  each 
individual  striving  for  the  freest  realization  of  his  con- 
ception of  the  word  "important";  yet  strangely  enough, 
man's  official  documents  would  have  us  believe  that  man 
is  ceasing  to  be  a  human  being. 

Unwilling  to  appear  as  he  is,  he  insists  on  representing 
himself  as  he  is  not,  more  especially  as  he  is  not  in  his 
solemn  and  owlish  writings  known  as  biography  and 
history. 

§      §       § 

flThe  quality  called  hope  and  the  word  smug  have  long 
assured  us  that  morally  we  have  gone  far,  indeed.  The 
general  history-thing  tendency  is  to  proclaim  as  already 
reached  certain  distant  and  highly  imaginary  goals  of 
Brotherhood,  much  thundered  about  in  the  index  but 
later  glossed  over  mightily  in  the  actual  text. 
flTo  those  mere  mortals  that  fail  to  reach  the  heights, 
the  charge  "nominal"  is  flung  back,  this  is,  nominal  in- 
stead of  real  this-or-that ;  nominal  Christians  instead  of 
real  Christians,  for  example. 

This  line  of  defensive  trenches  has  been  hastily  digged 
since  the  great  War  of  1914;  and  the  conventional  up- 
holders of  the  lies  of  society  see  no  inconsistency  in 
charging  that  Christianity,  except  the  "nominal"  kind, 
does  not  exist  in  England,  Germany,  Austria,  France, 
Italy,  Russia,  or  elsewhere  in  the  great  European  war- 
zone.  The  difficulty  is  not  with  man  or  nation,  but 
with  failure  to  stand  by  something  dogmatic,  exclusive 
or  ecclesiastical,  so  we  are  solemnly  assured. 


BLOOD-LUST  TO  PSALMS  49 

fl  Science  tells  us :  no  cause  without  effect,  no  effect  with- 
out cause :  hence  we  see  in  this  history-thing  appertaining 
to  the  great  War  of  1914,  that  man  is  already  talking  of 
a  "new"  religion  to  come  out  of  the  War.  The  inevitable 
reaction  from  blood-lust  to  psalm-singing  is  very  simple. 
It  expresses  no  new  aspiration  of  humanity,  however 
egotistically  that  end  may  be  proclaimed  as  centering 
around  some  "new"  form  of  social  idealism. 
fl  The  appeal  at  best,  is  merely  from  Philip  drunk  to 
Philip  sober. 

fl  Man,  having  indulged  his  world-wide  saturnalia  of 
hatred  and  suspicion,  murdering  by  machinery  five 
millions  of  human  beings,  it  is  but  natural  that  the  broth- 
ers, in  an  enthusiasm  of  admiration,  should  therafter 
fall  into  each  other's  arms. 

Any  "new"  religion  coming  therefrom  will  not  necessar- 
ily be  an  exemplification  of  brotherhood — any  more  than 
were  hundreds  of  prior  politico-religious  appeals,  down 
thru  the  dusty  corridors  of  the  Past. 
ff  Man  will  continue  to  be  a  man,  act  like  a  man,  live 
like  a  man,  just  as  he  always  has. 

Nor  must  we  fail  to  point  out  the  knothole  in  the  wall, 
to  wit,  that  man,  in  addition,  will  study  to  present  him- 
self as  he  is  not :  and  here  the  fight  for  the  newer  intel- 
lectual freedom  must  begin ! 

fl  Why  does  man  prefer  to  present  himself,  as  he  is  not  ? 
j[  Ask  no  riddles :  look  around,  and  make  up  your  mind. 
Then  frame  your  own  answer. 

§       §       § 
fl  Do  Americans  grow  each  day  more  stupid,  more  selfish  ? 

In  this  Republic,  especially,  we  are  daily  fed  on  the  fal- 
lacy that  the  one  "great"  modern  achievement  is  embodied 
in  our  smiling  attitude  toward  the  struggle  for  existence. 
Optimism,  that  special  gift  of  the  gods,  will  cure  all  ills. 


50  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

The  accepted  pastors,  poets,  philosophers  of  the  day 
admonish  us  in  a  hundred  coaxing  phrases  "never"  to 
lose  our  poise;  we  are  to  "think  happiness,"  we  are  to 
keep  away  from  trouble,  more  particularly  sad  scenes ; 
we  are  to  sing  and  dance ;  and  especially  should  we  repeat 
this  formula  mornings  on  awaking  and  at  night  when  we 
sink  to  sleep :  "All's  well  with  the  world !" 
Finally,  some  millions  of  men  and  women  in  this  Repub- 
lic have  carried  this  moral  optimism-run-mad  to  the  point 
where  they  accept  the  preachment  that  even  death  itself 
does  not  exist  for  the  true  optimist;  death  is  classed  as 
"National  prosperity,"  more  especially  death  by  Ameri- 
can-made cannon :  till  the  rivers  of  Europe  run  red  with 
blood. 

fl  That  sound  thinking  should  precede  belief  is  no  longer 
held  of  avail.  With  soft  flatteries,  man  strives  to  lull 
himself  by  turning  away  his  eyes  from  the  cruelties  and 
injustice  in  Society,  endeavors  to  read  the  problems  of 
existence  out  of  being  by  the  simple  expedient  of  keep- 
ing them  out  of  mind. 

Deceive  yourself  no  longer.  All  this  style  of  optimism- 
gone-mad  is  only  another  vicious  form  of  the  history- 
monger's  art,  wherein  spurious  virtues  are  set  up  to 
masquerade  as  realities. 

fl  Instead,  let  us  denounce  Civilization  for  its  brutality ; 
let  us  tell  for  once,  for  the  good  of  our  immortal  souls, 
not  how  great  we  are  but  how  low  we  sunk ;  let  us  dwell 
on  the  spirit  of  injustice,  with  which  this  earth  abounds ; 
and  no  longer  hide  our  shame  in  the  perversion  of  the  art 
of  writing  till,  like  the  eunuch  in  the  harem,  the  only 
safe  writer  like  the  only  safe  man  is  the  one  deprived  of 
virility,  weakened  by  expurgation  .  .  .  the  castrated  writer. 

§       §       § 
Look  round  and  reflect  that  at  no  time  in  the  recorded 


DESTINY  OR  DESTINATION  51 

history  of  mankind  has  there  not  been  incessant  rivalry 
and  feud ;  also  that  side  by  side  with  dissention  has  come 
the  idea  of  progress.  We  certainly  do  "progress,"  but 
in  what  direction? 

|f  Some  writers  persistently  use  the  words  "manifest  des- 
tiny" in  talking  about  the  "direction"  America  is  going; 
meaning  that  we  are  under  the  protecting  hand  of  Provi- 
dence. 

May  not  this  be  changed  to  an  excess  of  faith,  such  as 
David  had  in  Bible  times,  or  Cromwell  in  English  politi- 
cal life?  The  great  Commoner  was  able  to  justify  bru- 
talities by  declaring  that  the  Lord  was  on  his  side.  "Trust 
in  the  Lord,"  was  his  prayer,  "but  keep  your  powder 
dry." 

Cromwell  did  not  see  in  his  satire  on  faith  any  impeach- 
ment of  Providence,  any  confession  of  weakness  or  lack 
of  logic;  he  solemnly  held  to  the  theory  of  manifest  des- 
tiny. 

|f  Use  your  common  sense.  There  is  sharp  distinction 
between  destiny  and  destination.  It  is  conceivable  that 
we  might,  from  certain  general  political  tendencies  for 
example,  foreshadow  or  predict  the  direction  in  which 
these  United  States  are  moving ;  but  whether  we  are  now 
prepared  to  leap  the  gulf  and  proclaim  that  this  direc- 
tion is  an  exhibit  of  manifest  destiny  in  the  politico- 
religious  sense,  is  wholly  another  matter.  Yet  this  is  the 
mental  attitude  set  forth  by  many  of  our  National  history- 
mongers  till  our  moral  conceit  is  pitiful,  contrasted  with 
our  real  lives. 

|f  Let  us  take  one  or  two  concrete  cases :   An  American 
election  is  the  expression  of  the  will  of  the  majority 
(maybe)  but  is  it  necessarily  a  sign  of  a  destiny,  or  is  it 
instead  only  a  sign  of  a  destination? 
|f  The  invention  of  the  steam  engine,  spinning  and  weav- 


52  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

ing  machines,  telephone,  phonograph,  and  the  others,  have 
made  for  certain  additional  closeness  of  human  relations 
on  the  social,  business  and  practical  side;  but  are  we  to 
deduce  from  this  that  the  regeneration  of  mankind,  the 
New  Hope,  the  New  Jerusalem,  is  to  be  ushered  in  by  an 
era  of  machinery? 

fl  The  discovery  of  the  circulation  of  the  blood,  vaccina- 
tion, the  use  of  various  antiseptics,  lymphs  and  anti-tox- 
ines,  tend  likewise  to  create  a  larger  and  a  closer  com- 
munity of  interest  together  with  a  better  human  under- 
standing; hence  men  are  constantly  expressing  the  hope 
that  science  will,  nay  already  has  prolonged  the  average 
period  of  human  life;  has  to  a  certain  extent  banished 
pain  from  the  sickroom  and  has  made  life  more  endurable, 
as  we  pass  along — but  are  these  hopes  of  longevity  and 
greater  average  freedom  from  aches  and  fevers  to  be  read 
indeed  as  tokens  of  manifest  destiny  behind  the  pro- 
nouncements of  science,  or  on  the  other  side  is  it  any  more 
than  the  indication  of  a  general  direction,  often  changed, 
often  swerved  from,  often  set  aside,  often  contradicted 
by  later  discoveries,  and  often  subsequently  proven  totally 
false  and  hopeless? 

For  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  science  has  its  blunder- 
ings,  no  less  than  politics  or  invention. 
Or  as  Sheridan  Ford  says:    "In  these  days  of  hurried 
and  unthinking  effort,  remedies  insist  upon  their  diseases 
that  Science  may  triumph  and  no  time  be  lost." 

§       §       § 
If  Men  glorify  law  and  order,  in  public:  yet  in  private 

seek  to  set  aside  the  restraints  of  law  and  order. 
fl  Even  should  the  prisoner  in  a  moment  of  acute  honesty 
plead  "guilty,"  and  be  held  to  appear  for  sentence,  it  is 
not  unlikely  that,  in  the  interim,  peculiar  changes  take 
place  in  his  mind. 


"NOT  GUILTY!"  53 

fl  On  the  morrow,  the  lawyer  steps  forward  and  requests 
that  the  plea  be  changed  to  "not  guilty ;"  that  the  prisoner 
was  "not  himself"  when  he  made  the  former  admission ; 
that  the  prisoner  was  in  an  "abnormal  state  of  mind  and 
did  not  know  what  he  was  doing." 
fl  This  strange  situation  is  repeated  daily  in  courts  thru- 
out  America.    Every  man  arraigned  is  "not  guilty." 
fl  I  have  seen  a  man  stab  a  victim  with  a  knife,  then  plead 
"Not  guilty"  a  few  moments  later. 

fl  I  have  seen  a  woman  throw  acid  on  another  woman's 
dress,  and  when  arraigned  plead  "Not  guilty." 
fl  I  have  seen  a  thief  snatch  a  purse  in  a  crowded  street, 
only  to  tell  the  judge  "Not  guilty,  your  honor." 
fl  I  have  known  a  man  to  forge  signatures  to  a  mortgage, 
flee  the  country,  live  in  luxury  in  foreign  lands,  under  a 
fictitious  name,  and  when  brought  back  enter  his  plea, 
"Not  guilty." 

fl  And  altho  few  men  are  deceived,  the  fiction  is  set  up 
that  when  the  man  flourished  the  knife  he  was  not  him- 
self ;  when  he  stole  the  purse,  he  was  not  himself ;  when 
he  forged  the  mortgage,  or  seduced  the  girl,  he  was  not 
himself.  Never  is  man  "himself"  in  his  uncritical  mo- 
ments, but  always  the  victim  to  bad  men  or  bad  laws, 
fl  What  curse  has  fallen  on  this  our  race  that  men  instinc- 
tively dread  and  fear  each  other  in  their  books  and  writ- 
ings ;  and  to  our  inevitable  isolation,  as  individual  human 
beings,  we  do  now  deliberately  add  the  frightful  weight 
of  historical  hypocrisy  to  misdirect  the  inquiring  eye :  we 
call  East  the  West,  the  moon  the  sun ;  we  picture  pinch- 
beck as  gold,  pebbles  as  diamonds ;  our  national  glutton- 
ies masquerade  as  abstinence,  our  national  shams  as 
^salities,  our  national  hates  as  love,  our  national  greed 
ds  generosity,  our  national  curses  as  prayers; — till  thus 
we  would  link  our  little  lives  with  the  eternal  God  .  .  , 


54  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

ft  Not  how  great  we  are,  but  how  low  we  sunk  is  the 
thing  .  .  .  Come,  why  not?     Surely  you  do  not  expect 
a  man  to  make  confession  against  himself  ? 
ft  Do  these  words  convict  us  of  holding  that  life  is  essen- 
tially "something  evil?" 
Not  at  all ! 

Fighting,  loving,  praying — such  is  life  summed  up.  A 
blow,  in  the  fighting;  a  kiss,  in  the  loving;  a  prayer,  in 
the  praying.  Kisses  and  curses  are  equally  sweet,  in 
their  proper  places  as  all  men  well  know ; — and  a  prayer 
ends  life's  strange  scene. 

And  if  you  ask  me  "why"  man  is  that  way,  I  can  only 
reply :   Because  he  "is"  that  way ;  nor  is  there  any  good 
reason  why  he  should  "not"  continue  to  be  that  way, 
regardless  of  the  cunning  of  his  apt-historians, 
ft  One  thing,  at  least,  is  settled :  he  will  never  tell  the 
truth  about  himself  in  his  books  or  official  documents. 
Any  writing  intended  for  more  than  one  pair  of  eyes 
may  be  depended  upon  to  depart  from  reality  to  this  ex- 
tent, always :  to  do  whatever  is  necessary  in  order  not  to 
dispel  the  illusion  of  brotherhood, 
ft  How  is  this  farce  kept  up,  in  history  ? 
Man,  refusing  to  apply  cause  and  effect,  substitutes  some 
little,  immediate  "cause"  and  passes  the  big  causes. 
He  seems  to  be  afraid  of  his  own  part,  as  a  human  being. 
For  example,  during  the  great  War  of  1914,  many  able 
writers  lashed  themselves  into  fury  trying  to  show  that 
"all"  came  about  thru  a  broken  treaty — more  or  less, 
here  or  there. 

The  part  played  by  man,  the  fighter,  was  insolently  re- 
jected ;  and  we  behold  historians  thundering  about  the 
faulty  politico-religious  construction  of  society,  regard- 
less of  ten  thousand  instances  wherein  it  is  clearly  shown 
that  no  enterprise  of  politics  whatsoever  but  comes  to 


THE  VILE  POSE  55 

grief  at  last,  not  because  it  is  faulty  or  less  faulty,  but 
because  of  human  nature. 

Civilization  after  Civilization  has  crumbled  to  ruin  not 
because  the  plan  was  not  good  enough  as  a  plan,  but  be- 
cause in  the  end  men  will  have  their  way. 

§       §       § 

fl  There  is  no  question  that  man's  recorded  ignorance  re- 
garding himself  and  his  little  ways,  as  slurred  over  in 
historical  writings,  is  in  itself  still  another  vile  pose  to 
support  certain  forms  of  national,  civic  or  individual 
conceit,  rather  than  face  fundamental  facts. 
Even  a  crude  examination  of  origins  and  causations  in 
social  maladies  under  which  we  groan,  would  suggest 
that  if  we  ever  hope  to  advance  we  no  longer  deceive 
ourselves  by  glorifying  bits  of  fact,  detached  and  float- 
ing twixt  earth  and  sky,  idealizing  men's  ways. 
We  should  begin  by  facing  man,  himself,  and  noting 
closely  his  little  ways;  this  should  be  the  great  fact  in 
the  thing  called  history,  but  thus  far  it  has  been  least 
honored. 

fl  The  fundamental  truth  we  have  pointed  out  about  man's 
historical  pretensions  is  so  simple  that  its  value  may 
well  be  overlooked. 

It  need  not  take  long  then  to  see  that  the  great  "why" 
between  promise  and  performance,  religious,  social  or 
political,  resolves  itself  into  the  eternal  conflict  to  warp 
man  over  from  what  he  secretly  is  to  something  that  he 
pretends  to  accept  in  public,  but  in  private  protests 
against. 

Machine-driven  politics,  machine-driven  religions  find  you 
as  you  are  and  leave  you  as  you  were :  regardless  of  the 
proud  brag  of  a  social  order  built  on  something  more  than 
hypocrisy  and  deceit. 
With  a  steeple  every  half  mile,  a  school  house  on  every 


56  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

second  corner,  and  a  political  harangue  at  every  cross- 
roads, we  change  and  change  again  our  man-made  laws 
and  once  more  herald  the  better  day  :  but  these  laws  leave 
man's  heart  untouched;  for  the  simple  reason  that  man 
was  man  long  before  he  was  a  lawyer — and  will  remain 
a  man  long  after  the  race  of  lawyers  has  passed  into 
oblivion. 

§.     §       § 
fl  Although  there  is  a  wide  gulf  between  repealing  one 

man-made  law  and  passing  another,  and  thus  entering 
the  New  Utopia,  man  likes  to  make  himself  believe  that 
the  "new"  politics  or  the  "new"  religion  will  enact  the 
missing  miracle. 

This  explains  how  prone  we  are,  one  and  all,  to  support 
for  public  consumption  absurd  reports  of  spurious  indi- 
vidual, civic  or  national  politico-religious  codes,  as  against 
known  private  performances. 

Everywhere  of  late  years  thru  this  land  we  have  seen  to 
the  point  of  mental  nausea  the  reforming-fellow  with  his 
new  moralities,  his  new  religion,  his  new  progressive 
politics;  protesting  in  pious  piffle  the  essential  unity  of 
nations. 

fl  Yes,  let  our  loud-mouthed  reforming  editor,  a  freak 
in  very  appearance,  this  very  day  put  on,  to  create  the 
proper  mental  hocus-pocus,  his  tin  crown  and  his  yellow 
robe  of  cotton  cloth,  and  mounting  his  soap-box  at  the 
curb  proceed  now  with  his  Heaven-defying  harangue. 
At  the  psychological  moment  he  brings  out  his  many- 
paged  Scroll  of  the  Referendum  and  you  and  I  start  for- 
ward, to  sign;  sign  we  scarcely  know  what,  but  in  the 
general  excitement  sign  we  do ;  not  without  a  certain 
inner  righteousness  bordering  on  moral  indignation  that 
we  did  not  sign  the  thing,  long  ago,  to  wit : 
fl  That  the  sex-instinct  be  limited  to  breeding,  only,  within 


"IF"  5,000  "BELIEVE"  ?  57 

the  law,  and  having  once  bred,  it  is  ordained  that  man 
shall  die. 

ft  That  woman  shall  no  longer  use  her  fatal  spell  of  beauty, 
to  ensnare  men. 

fl  That  a  child  born  out  of  wedlock  shall  be  branded  with 
a  tiny  fleur-de-lis,  making  clear  his  inferiority  to  the  child 
born  in  wedlock ;  regardless  of  the  fact  that  all  the  mid- 
wives  in  Chicago  surveying  two  new-born  babes,  one  the 
child  of  love,  the  other  the  offspring  of  state-officialism 
(as  certified  by  a  75-cent  wedding  license),  are  unable  to 
tell  one  from  the  other,  knowing  no  names  or  pedigrees, 
ft  Or,  our  reforming-fellow  urges  that  all  the  vines  in 
America  be  uprooted,  and  sign  that  we  certainly  do  with 
a  sort  of  mock-heroic  final  flourish  of  our  busy,  social 
goosequill. 

fl  Thus  do  we  play  the  braggart  with  our  brother's  busi- 
ness and  find  glory  in  announcing  that  if  "500  believe," 
it  must  be  a  sign  of  more  truth,  than  if  "only  one  be- 
lieved." And  when  5000  "believe,"  not  only  is  the  new 
idea  important,  but  is  a  veritable  sign  of  manifest  destiny. 
We  are  now  committed  to  these  particular  politico-relig- 
ious attitudes,  as  against  all  other  politico-religious  atti- 
tudes whatsoever,  offered  by  rival  reforming-fellows: 
at  least  for  the  time  being  our  lot  is  cast  with  our  particu- 
lar reformer  and  his  particular  attitudes.  Henceforth, 
we  glory  in  the  moral  uplift  that  comes  of  counting 
ourselves  of  some  new  church,  party,  or  cult. 

§       §     J 

ff  To  maintain  undisturbed  the  iridescent  dream  of  man's 
moral  obligation  about  his  brother,  is  the  one  solemn  duty 
of  kept-historians. 

Therefore,  in  all  writings  intended  for  the  public  eye, 
man  supports  a  strict  and  hideous  censorship  in  National 
history,  morals  and  manners;  a  jealously  guarded  control 


S3  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

over  all  scribblings  makes  impossible  any  picture  of  the 
under  surface,  as  against  outward  appearances, 
fl  "Cut  out   loo  feet  of  film,"  says  the  moving-picture 
censor,  headed  by  the  dignified  Madam  Grundy,  "this  will 
never  do ;  it  is  too  scandalous." 

fl  "Blue-pencil  that  love  episode,"  orders  the  publisher, 
"or  we  will  be  arrested  for  improper  use  of  the  mails." 
fl  "Tone  down  that  scene  where  the  man  refuses  to  salute 
the  flag;  it  is  unpatriotic,"  urges  the  stage  director, 
fl  To  keep  the  surface  of  Society  unruffled  even  by  so 
much  as  a  disturbing  ripple,  regardless  of  the  sink-hole 
beneath,  is  the  nominal  ideal  behind  all  writings  intended 
for  general  delectation. 

fl  What  abnormal  something  is  gratified  by  censor-hypoc- 
risies in  poems,  pictures  and  histories? 
flTo  read  man's  international  remarks,  more  especially 
his  congratulatory  resolutions,  treaties  and  agreements, 
is  in  truth  little  more  than  to  listen  to  a  braggart's  tale, 
full  of  sound  but  wanting  in  sincerity :  a  tale  ballooned  to 
the  bursting :  a  tale  termed  historical  but  in  reality  a  con- 
ventional pose  of  Society,  used  to  bolster  up  the  "should 
be"  in  the  "already  is." 

§       §       § 

fl  If  all  those  vast  human  swarms,  black,  brown,  red, 
yellow  and  white,  that  at  present  crawl  like  ants  over  this 
Earth  should  of  a  sudden  perish  utterly  in  stupendous 
world-racking  catastrophe  bringing  chaos  to  reign  again, 
this  fair  globe  now  a  black  and  voiceless  ruin  swinging 
thru  space  in  utter  darkness,  dead,  without  seed  or  fires 
whatsoever :  nor  mortal  stick  nor  stone  remained  of  it  all, 
with  the  sole  exception  of  a  shelf  of  books  writ  in  times  of 
old  and  called  "histories":  and  in  the  fulness  of  a  New 
Time,  let  us  say  100,000  years  hence,  a  strange  people 
should  descend  from  the  planet  Mars;  and  the  greatest 


MISUSES  OF  POWER  59 

scholar  amongst  them  after  vast  researches  should  find,  in 
some  devilish  way,  the  actual  key  to  our  lost  alphabet,  as 
seen  in  the  miraculously  preserved  book-scribbles:  then 
this  supreme  question,  Whether  after  translating  the 
books,  line  for  line,  the  explorers  would  obtain  a  true 
picture  of  the  race  that  perished  ? 

f[  Would  intimate  companionship  with  a  shelf  of  histories, 
even  tho  it  were  half  a  mile  long,  acquaint  the  newcomers 
with  the  heart  of  the  vanished  people  ? 
fl  We  reply  at  once  that,  herein,  a  certain  bitter  satire 
between  life  as  lived,  and  life  as  reported  for  historical 
consumption,  invariably  nullifies  the  sincerity  of  the 
printed  word.  The  width  of  this  chasm  is  known  to 
those  who  have  had  experience  in  the  ways  of  the  world. 
fl  Not  only  would  the  savant  from  Mars  be  unable  to 
learn,  from  our  own  reports,  what  manner  of  men  we 
were,  but  also  would  it  utterly  escape  him  that  every 
class  on  this  Earth  always  strove  to  have  offences  which 
injured  that  class  subjected  to  extreme  penalty,  yet  prated 
of  Brotherhood :  for  misuses  of  power  by  religious  sects, 
political  parties,  as  well  as  by  individuals  in  their  private 
lives,  are  so  obscurred  by  glorification  of  kept-historians 
that  Vice  is  always  masquerading  in  the  robes  of  Virtue ; 
and  no  crime  so  great  that  expediency  of  some  sort  is 
not  ultimately  set  up  to  condone:  as  for  example  the 
underlying  causes  of  the  great  War  of  1914. 


X 

THE  HUMAN  KALEIDOSCOPE 

ff  From  age  to  age,  it  has  been  the  practice  of 
history-mongers  to  flatter  our  pride  by  telling  us 
how  great  we  were,  not  how  low  we  sunk:  till  we 
have  come  to  believe  that  History  is  not  a  record 
of  men's  little  ways,  but  of  the  doings  of  demi- 
gods .  .  . 

flA  strong  leader,  by  tireless  repetition  of  some  idea, 
finally  brings  about  faith  in  that  idea.  It  does  not  follow 
that  this  leader  must  necessarily  be  wiser  than  the  masses. 
Often  he  may  be  proven  a  charlatan,  but  this  does  not 
justify  cynical  damnation.  The  mountebank  is  swayed, 
even  as  you  are,  by  pride,  passion  and  prejudice.  It  is 
always  his  will  to  power,  or  your  will  to  power,  rather 
than  the  inherent  validity  of  his  ideas  or  your  ideas ! 
ft  First,  he  stands  alone  with  his  idea,  whatever  it  may 
be.  He  keeps  repeating  it,  but  no  one  listens.  Finally, 
one  person  is  convinced!  This  is  the  beginning.  Well, 
if  one,  why  not  two,  then  ten,  then  a  hundred,  or  a  thou- 
sand, or  ten  thousand  ? 
ff  And  so  the  wonder  grows. 

f  At  last,  our  stubborn  man  with  the  idea  is  believed! 
He  now  has  his  long-awaited  day  to  prove  the  force  of 
his  contribution  to  human  welfare, 
ft  Here  enters  a  strange  fallacy. 

60 


DO  WE  STAND  THE  TEST?  61 

fl  The  people  expect  some  new  form,  or  change  of  gov- 
ernment, to  make  them  happy  and  free.  The  machinery 
of  legislation  is  the  thing.  It  is  proclaimed  the  great 
leveler. 

fl  Thus  men  eagerly  try  all  manner  of  political  enterprises, 
believing  that  ultimately  in  some  plan  of  government, 
social  equality  will  result.  In  the  light  of  the  anomaly 
that  in  spite  of  our  efforts,  we  persist  in  reverence  for 
"the  good  old"  days,  as  against  the  iniquities  of  the  mo- 
ment, it  is  clear  that  either  we  deceive  ourselves,  or  are 
forever  wandering  about  in  a  fool's  paradise, 
flln  this  regard,  is  our  Republic  any  happier  to-day 
under  forty-eight  States  than  under  the  original  thirteen  ? 
Or,  if  the  test  be  not  happiness  but  religion,  can  it  be 
shown  that  we  now  observe  the  Golden  Rule  more  than 
did  our  fathers?  Or,  if  the  test  be  neither  gaiety  nor 
Golden  Rule,  then  is  it  our  golden  mountain,  heaped  in 
trafficking  in  battles  ?  These  are  great  questions ! 
fl  Have  done  with  your  high-sounding  gibberish,  your 
mock-heroics  and  your  shams,  flattering  man  to  death: 
history  should  be  neither  more  nor  less  than  the  stark 
story  of  the  human  heart,  or  human  nature  in  action. 
fl  We  have  had  too  little  of  it  in  the  past :  man  has  thus 
far  been  afraid  of  his  own  record,  has  refrained  from 
picturing  himself  as  he  is,  and  has  substituted  a  spurious 
history-thing  compounded  of  self-conceits  and  lies. 
This  peculiar,  lying  type  of  writing  has  mightily  pleased 
man,  in  times  gone  by ;  but  the  lid  was  off  when  the  Great 
War  burst  into  fury :  no  longer  could  man  conceal  from 
himself  the  essentials  of  his  nature.  Kept-historians  have 
been  mightily  put  to  it  ever  since  to  censor  the  facts, 
fl  There  will  always  be  a  new  crop  of  Immortals,  no 
doubt,  but  henceforth  it  is  going  to  be  more  difficult  to 
conceal  the  strings  that  make  the  puppets  dance. 


62  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 


need  a  king!  A  king  should  be  such-and-such. 
He  must  act  thus-and-so.  Lay  out  the  purple  robe,  the 
ermine,  the  crown,  the  sceptre,  the  globe  of  this  Earth. 
fl  Even  in  this  Republic,  has  not  the  cry  gone  forth,  afar  : 
We  need  an  heroic  figure,  carrying  the  burdens  of  human- 
ity and  fighting  the  battles  of  humanity.  We  do  not 
want  a  mere  man;  we  prefer  a  demi-god.  Thus,  our 
Nation's  glory  will  be  embellished. 

fl  By  cutting  and  shuffling,  by  keeping  the  man  out  of  it, 
by  repression  and  by  blue-penciling,  at  last  with  much 
pains  we  laboriously  create  our  royal  fellow,  tricked  in 
precious  ermine-trimmed  robes  ;  —  and  when  he  speaks  the 
world  must  stand  agape. 

fils  it  not  high  time  we  were  done  with  this  historical 
anti-gravity,  forced  to  view  our  king  (who  after  all  is 
a  mere  mortal),  dangling  'tween  Heaven  and  Earth  ;  with 
no  familiar  frailties  of  flesh  and  blood  to  prove  him 
brother  to  the  common  man?  This  overdone  history- 
thing  is  getting  on  our  nerves.  It  is  not  honest.  It  is 
crooked.  It  feeds  us  on  wind  and  gas. 

§      §      § 

fl  We  are  thinking  at  this  moment  of  many  names,  made 
"great"  by  incessant  pounding  of  brass.  Instead,  the 
crude  man  were  good  enough  ! 

It  is  a  pity  that  human  weaknesses  should  be  so  over- 
laid with  fluff  and  embroidery  that  the  erring  fellow  mas- 
querades as  a  moral  giant.  The  old-line  idea  of  brag 
in  history-things  has  long  obscurred  our  dearly  beloved 
sins  and  takes  delight  instead  in  looking  on  man  —  decid- 
edly as  he  is  not.  Is  man  ashamed  of  himself,  otherwise 
why  does  he  prefer  to  present  himself  as  he  is  not  .  .  .  ? 
fl  Open  the  history-thing  book  anywhere,  at  haphazard. 
Presto,  we  chance  upon  the  mock-heroic.  The  case  will 
suffice  for  hundreds,  up  and  down  the  scale.  The  prin- 

•  > 


"IMMORTAL  JOHN"  63 

ciple  we  seek  is  the  psychology  behind  the  history-thing. 
The  idea  is  to  flatter  the  human  animal. 
j[  Immortal  John,  made  "immortal"  largely  by  literary 
tricks  repeated  till  accepted  as  Holy  Writ.  This  miser- 
able hypochondriac,  now  dubbed  "immortal,"  as  we  read 
here,  was,  in  his  own  time,  classed  as  a  jail-bird.  During 
the  miserable  years  of  his  prison  "den,"  when  the  heav- 
enly light  was  supposed  to  be  streaming  thru  his  mind, 
John  Bunyan  sat  in  his  cell  writing  down  his  musings  of 
the  hypochondriac. 

Sometimes,  John  stood  by  the  gate,  chained  to  the  ankle, 
hawking  miserable  cotton  laces  in  the  hope  of  a  coin 
to  help  feed  his  famished  guts.  When  not  writing,  John 
wove  lace;  and  Bedford  town  often  saw  this  miserable 
wretch  ("Immortal  John"  they  call  him  now),  going  half 
blind  twisting  his  cotton  meshes. 

John's  fellow-prisoners,  in  the  upper  tiers,  begged  by 
using  a  stocking  hitched  to  a  string  and  dropped  to  the 
street  level;  the  prisoners  downstairs  tied  a  spoon  to  a 
stick  and  thrust  it  under  the  noses  of  passers-by. 
Vermin  swarmed,  the  cells  were  dank,  prison-fever  took 
off  many  of  the  lads,  but  John  Bunyan  survived  to  be 
dubbed  "immortal"  by  a  generation  that  knew  him  not. 
fl  Immortal  ?  And  in  leg-irons  ?  So  much  for  man's 
judgment,  as  expressed  in  history,  when  talking  of  his 
fellow-man !  The  very  breath  of  John's  foul  hole  fairly 
knocked  you  down;  square  narrow  walls,  torture-cham- 
bers ;  drainless  vaults  reeked  their  miasma ;  frightful 
cruelties  were  practised,  and  there  is  a  story  that  has 
crept  down  the  years  telling  of  the  machine  used  to  tear 
hair  from  the  scalp. 

§       §       § 

fl  Bunyan  had  a  chance  to  get  away,  but  preferred  pres- 
ent wretchedness  to  miseries  he  knew  not  of.  British 


64  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

judges  were  wont  to  menace  men  like  Bunyan  with  dread- 
ful penalties,  till  the  prisoner  in  self-defense,  as  it  were, 
would  petition  to  be  sent  beyond  seas,  and  thereupon 
court  attaches  would  seize,  gag,  chain  hand  and  foot,  such 
petitioner,  bundling  him  on  board  for  China  or  Jamaica, 
there  to  be  sold  into  slavery. 

flThus  even  so  simple  an  act  as  knotting  threads  is 
spattered  with  blood  and  tears,  altho  the  later  generation 
finds  the  victim  a  poet  and  proclaims  him  Immortal  John 
Bunyan.  We  get  around  our  stupidity  of  judgment  in 
various  ways,  but  chiefly  by  closing  our  eyes  and  calling 
on  history  to  tell  us  of  patent  rights  for  new  spinning 
or  weaving  machines,  names  of  inventors,  dates,  docu- 
ments ;  and  we  present  our  history  of  weaving  in  imper- 
sonal terms,  largely,  such  as  imports  and  exports,  pay 
roll,  and  what  you  please ;  always  by  a  species  of  historical 
anti-gravity  keeping  John  Bunyan  and  his  ilk  out  of  it, 
endeavoring  to  detach  all  human  elements ;  and  charging 
to  the  glory  of  national  commerce  the  edging  of  coarse 
cotton  on  the  peasant's  petticoat  over  which  John  and 
his  crucified  kind  slaved  in  dungeons. 
fl  For  those  ardent  supporters  of  conventional  lies  of 
history  who  would  use  the  so-called  "evolution  of  ma- 
chinery" to  support  a  comforting  theory  of  upward  Civi- 
lization, we  might  as  well,  with  equal  logic  turn  the  thing 
upside. 

Instead  of  showing  man's  ingenious  assaults  on  Nature, 
by  substituting  machine  power  for  human  fingers,  the 
facts  of  mechanical  progress  (in  this  instance  weaving), 
certainly  show  man's  beastly  assaults  on  his  own  kind. 
fl  The  high  and  mighty  school  of  historians  have  too  long 
replied  with  their  manifest  destinies,  shining  bright  and 
clear  thru  men's  ways ;  loudly  asserting  that  this  Age  of 
Machinery  with  its  innumerable  cogs  and  wheels  upholds 


65 

the  convenient  dogma  that,  side  by  side  with  our  amaz- 
ing mechanical  ingenuities,  we  now  support  correspond- 
ing moral  improvement  in  man,  himself;  but  compare 
these  observations,  imaginings  and  protestations  with  the 
known  and  secret  facts  of  life  as  lived,  and  as  you  know 
it  is  lived,  and  your  pompously-termed  progress  is  to  be 
taken,  instead,  merely  as  another  heart-breaking  token  of 
man's  enormous  egotism. 

§       §      § 

fl  Man  in  his  march  does  unusual  things,  and  quite  natu- 
rally confuses  his  progress  in  mechanics  with  his  spirit- 
ual ideals :  holding  that  the  redemption  of  this  earth  is 
to  come  thru  certain  ameliorations  and  conveniences  asso- 
ciated with  combinations  of  brass,  tin,  iron,  copper,  and 
other  metals.  These  inventions  will  help  carry  him  to 
Heaven  on  flowery  beds  of  ease : 

fl  Foods  that  to  a  certain  extent  make  him  less  dependent 
on  Nature — 

fl  Eyeglasses  to  overcome  failing  sight — 
fl  Encasing  his  feet  in  the  hide  of  the  bull  instead  of 
going  barefooted — 

|f  Utilizing  electric  waves  to  send  messages — 
fl  Clothing  his  body  against  the  winter's  storms,  thru  the 
art  of  weaving — 

fl  Traveling  swiftly  in  his  automobile,  in  places  where  his 
grandfather  laboriously  used  oxen — 
fl  And  finally,  also  to  go  forward  by  patroling  the  streets 
with  men  called  police,  carrying  revolvers  and  clubs ;  and 
by  setting  up  stone  buildings  with  barred  windows  for 
the  forcible  detention  of  those  who,  as  they  say,  commit 
crimes  against  society. 

fl  Now  here  is  the  curious  conflict  between  man,  as  a 
natural  man,  and  man  as  a  member  of  society:  That  as 
time  passes  man  tries  to  make  himself  believe  that  he  is 


66 

on  this  earth  to  carry  out  a  social,  religious  and  artistic 
programme ;  and  that,  in  proportion  as  he  adheres  to  what 
are  known  as  the  best  inventions  of  his  little  hour  he  is  a 
good  man,  otherwise  he  is  a  bad  man. 
fl  All  this  is  denominated  "progress." 

§       §       § 

fl  If  the  coming  of  electricity,  motor-cars,  telephones,  and 
the  other  triumphs  of  this  much-acclaimed  Age  of  Ma- 
chinery, is  supposed  to  imply  a  corresponding  moral  in- 
crease in  man's  stature,  side  by  side  with  the  mechanical 
giants  he  has  created,  then  why  does  man  prostitute  his 
noblest  inventions  to  help  him  kill  wholesale,  by  machin- 
ery? 

fl  The  Napoleonic  wars  were  fought  with  flint-lock  muz- 
zle-loaders, with  smooth-barrels,  letting  the  bullets  fly 
where  they  might:  came  next  the  breach-loader  with  its 
mechanism  for  more  deadly  slaughter,  yet  only  one  ball 
of  lead  out  of  600  did  find  the  heart  in  Wellington's 
campaigns;  at  Spiechern  the  Germans,  reasoning  more 
closely  in  mechanics,  killed  off  one  Frenchman  with  each 
279th  volley,  and  at  Woerth  the  death  toll,  bullet  for 
heart,  was  one  corpse  for  147  balls  of  lead ;  but  so  much 
did  Society  progress  in  our  much-lauded  Age  of  Machin- 
ery that  in  the  Russo-Turko  war  one  victim  died  for  each 
66  bullets  fired  ; — and  what  the  frightful  harvest  of  death 
may  be  figured,  bullet  for  bullet,  in  the  momentous  War 
begun  in  1914,  will  prove  the  American  advance  in  kill- 
ing by  machinery,  made  since  the  crude  days  of  1800! 
fl  Devising  more  cunning  ways  of  doing  cruelties,  at  the 
same  time  we  turn  our  eyes  to  the  skies  and  thank  our 
God  that  we  do  indeed  exemplify  in  history  the  manifest 
destiny  that  so  long  our  historians  have  assured  us  is  ours. 
fl  Until  it  can  be  shown  that  the  heart,  to-day,  differs 
from  the  heart  of  old,  the  statistics  on  which  we  rely  to 


WOLVES  OF  PROGRESS  67 

support  our  pride  fall  by  the  wayside.  The  story  of  our 
battles,  kingly  lines,  political  parties,  crop  reports,  oil 
exports,  balance  of  trade,  assumes  the  latter-day  develop- 
ment of  the  individual  man  beyond  his  father.  And  this 
is  true  in  some  respects — but  not  in  the  way  we  would 
have  it  appear. 

The  mockery  of  this  type  of  history  is  found  in  this: 
that  you  could  know  it  from  end  to  end  and  not  know 
man,  as  he  is. 

The  ancient  and  honorable  ideal  that  the  American 
statesman  fortifies  himself  by  the  study  of  history  is 
merely  to  ask  for  bread  and  being  forced  to  lick  a  plate 
of  brass. 

§      §      § 

fiThis  is  what  we  are  told:  that  perfected  individuals 
compose  the  grand  order  of  our  National  light  bearers ; 
that  Civilization  goes  forward  by  a  crooked  road,  now  a 
short  advance,  again  a  rear-curve ;  a  crop  of  wheat  and 
a  crop  of  tares ;  harvest  and  blight,  blight  and  harvest ; 
fat  years  succeeded  by  lean ; — but  all  the  while  man  rises 
to  higher  things,  century  after  century, 
fi  This  is  what  we  know :  in  blood  and  tears  we  do  strug- 
gle up  and  down  this  Earth  seeking  our  satisfactions, 
nations  as  well  as  individuals,  and  refusing  to  yield  our 
advantages,  even  as  you  and  I  do  that  identical  thing  in 
our  petty  affairs. 

Thus  we  are  forced  to  piece  together  our  pitiful  historical 
mumblings  about  our  glorious  intentions,  and  solemnly 
proclaim  our  National  moralities. 

Lincoln  abolished  slavery,  but  a  thousand  types  of  slavery 
exist  at  this  very  hour,  as  they  always  have;  Howard 
reformed  the  prisons  of  England,  but  a  thousand  hidden 
prisons  still  exist,  as  they  always  have. 
No  more  suffering  for  the  weavers,  we  solemnly  protest, 


68  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

after  certain  legal  reforms  following  the  weavers'  riots 
of  1815,  no  more  weavers  dying  for  lack  of  bread. 
Yet  in  1915,  we  take  some  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
weavers  from  their  spindles,  put  rifles  in  their  hands  and 
send  them  out  to  enact  the  role  of  butchers. 
Then  we  lie  to  ourselves  in  our  books  and  we  censor  the 
news,  fearing  the  light  of  day  on  our  conduct;  and  as 
fast  as  we  are  unmasked  we  plead  justification. 
It  is  as  tho  our  historians,  closing  their  eyes  to  the  fact 
that  at  no  time  on  this  Earth  has  there  been  peace,  occupy 
themselves  even  while  the  storms  are  raging  in  plugging 
up  holes  in  the  social  dyke  as  fast  as  the  angry  waters 
rise,  while  ignoring,  nay  denying  the  ever-present  hurri- 
cane. 

fl  But,  on  the  other  hand,  we  pass  our  days  reporting  lies, 
largely,  and  crying  out  that  all's  well,  as  tho  we  were 
afraid  to  take  a  good  look  at  ourselves  in  the  glass  of 
Time.  Certain  it  is  that  we  may  not  overcome  the  morbid 
growths  of  Society  unless  we  are  willing  to  make  frank 
confession  at  home :  that  we  may  thus  gather  truths  upon 
which  to  support  a  real  theory  of  origins  and  causation 
will  never  come  to  pass  as  long  as  man  persists  in  flatter- 
ing his  self-conceit,  thru  the  scribblings  of  kept-historians, 
fi  If  now  all  this  artificial  building  up  and  tearing  down 
of  one  theory  after  the  other,  in  religion,  society  or  poli- 
tics, is  of  the  stupendous  importance  writers  would  have 
us  believe,  why  not  for  once  construct  a  society  wherein 
man  may  act  in  accordance  with  his  inherent  nature,  and 
at  the  same  time  not  offend  ? 

Why  may  not  the  irreconciliable  breach  between  man's 
ways  and  man's  conception  of  a  superior  social  order  be 
bridged  ? 

fl  Man  himself  stands  in  the  way.  His  very  rebellion 
against  society  as  found  is  a  confession  of  the  artificiality 


SOCIAL  BLOOD-TAINTS  69 

of  the  struggle.  To  warp  man  over  to  something  that 
he  accepts  in  public,  but  denies  in  private  has  always  been 
foredoomed  to  failure ;  and  the  innate  hypocrisy  and  de- 
ceit of  society  persists  largely  because  man  will  continue 
to  try  every  political  theory  within  reach,  excepting  always 
one:  To  cure  man  of  his  morbid  tastes  (if  such  is  your 
proud  hope),  start  in  and  tell  the  truth  about  yourself. 
Begin  with  your  own  drunkenness,  your  seductions,  your 
numerous  types  of  selfishness,  your  vulgar  ambitions,  your 
petty  thieving,  and  the  various  social  masks  you  assume, 
to  cover  your  face,  and  still  hold  your  position  in  society. 
Be  exceedingly  candid ;  come  forward  with  all  necessary 
and  intimate  details ;  and  in  due  time,  piecing  all  together, 
rest  assured  some  social  genius  will  find  the  remedy  for 
the  morbid  growths,  even  as  scientists  by  studying  the 
likes  and  dislikes  of  cellforms  in  the  human  body, 
finally  hit  on  specific  antitoxins  for  old  and  baffling  dis- 
eases. 

fl  If  in  medicine,  why  not  also  in  society? 
j|  Here  is  what  we  should  do :  History,  for  years  to  come, 
till  mankind  is  awakened  from  stupid  dreams  of  imagi- 
nary perfection  amidst  a  world  of  bitterness  and  strife, 
should  cease  being  a  fairy-tale  to  flatter  us  into  delight 
over  our  individual,  civic  or  national  virtues.  Instead, 
let  the  strong  man  come  forth  with  his  methods  of  the 
dissecting  room,  this  new  Doctor  of  Social  History ;  and 
let  him  proceed  now  without  further  delay  fearlessly  to 
inform  his  students  of  social  blood  taints  and  social  mor- 
bid growths. 

Too  long  have  we  looked  only  at  the  rouged  lips,  the 
false  hair,  the  velvet  gowns,  the  ermine  robes,  the  dia- 
mond tieras,  while  in  God's  name  starvation,  misery,  hy- 
pocrisy and  fraud  have  been  supported  in  high  places. 
|  We  see  no  real  social  enlightenment  possible,  for  this 


70  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

Earth,  unless  our  breed  of  animals  with  the  pen  drop 
their  rose-water  ink-pots,  and  seize  the  surgeon's  knife : 
for  too  much  flattery  has  been  the  spoil  of  us  these  many 
years  gone  by. 

At  least  then  we  will  know  what  to  expect  of  human 
beings.  We  do  not  hope  to  transform  man  into  something 
more  than  man:  that  were  foolish  and  vain.  But  man 
could  at  least  look  at  his  own  picture  and  make  up  his 
mind  if  he  is  satisfied. 

§       §       § 

fl  Yes  indeed,  thank  God !  the  bayonet  may  still  be  trusted 
in  British  hands,  or  in  German  or  in  American,  French, 
or  Russian,  and  its  use  described  by  our  kept-historians 
as  "chiefly  moral." 

Surely  we  are  not  exasperating  enough  to  expect  humans 
to  cease  to  be  humans,  in  order  to  demonstrate  that  this 
or  that  political  party  should  rule  the  hour  ? 
j[  The  children  of  Montrose  were  unable  to  read  because 
of  long  hours  in  the  cotton  mills,  but  to-day  tho  our 
generation  boasts  that  it  can  read  in  seven  languages, 
our  culture  has  not  robbed  us  of  our  National  Museum 
(Smithsonian),  where  in  one  of  the  largest  sections  are 
displayed  hundreds  of  types  of  guns,  pistols,  swords, 
daggers,  and  other  weapons  of  slaughter,  showing  the 
vast  amount  of  thought  the  human  animal  has  devoted 
to  murder,  at  wholesale,  and  that  too  in  times  peculiarly 
exploited  as  the  forward  march  of  progress,  as  against 
the  cruder  methods  man  used  in  the  days  of  the  flint-lock. 

§       §       § 

$  Let  us  be  reasonable. 

Could  the  ancient  and  honorable  tribe  of  weavers  and 
spinners  return  to  this  Earth,  on  a  brief  tour  of  observa- 
tion, this  would  be  their  report : 
j|  In  the  days  of  the  Pharaohs,  the  shroud  we  so  labor- 


STILL  ARE  YE  NAKED  71 

iously  wove  from  flax  with  spindle  and  distaff,  winds 
the  shepherd  and  king,  alike. 

fl  In  the  far  times  of  Homer,  long,  long  before  the  Age 
of  Machinery  was  dreamed  of,  still  our  women  use  the 
crude  methods  of  spindle  and  distaff,  and  still  the  shroud 
covers  the  faults  and  frailties  of  human  clay, 
fl  In  Solomon's  day,  as  Holy  Writ  proclaims,  her  busy 
hands  hold  the  distaff  and  the  cloth  wraps  mortal  dust, 
whether  for  court  ball  or  for  the  tomb. 
ft  Likewise,  in  our  own  glorious  time,  even  to  a  period  as 
recent  as  the  Battle  of  Waterloo,  the  old-fashioned  spindle 
and  distaff  remains  man's  main  support  to  protect  his 
body  from  the  winter's  storms,  or  to  fashion  the  purple 
of  kings  for  avarice  and  pride. 

Then  comes  the  Age  of  Machinery  and  the  distaff  is  laid 
away  for  the  spinning-frame ;  first  run  by  water-power, 
then  by  steam,  to-day  by  electricity ;  and  with  power  in- 
creased ten-millionfold  ball-room  gowns  of  choicest  fab- 
rics, in  wondrous  art-patterns,  are  now  fabricated  with 
lightning-like  rapidity  for  this  proud  generation;  sup- 
porting our  ancient  pride  of  position  by  woven  gee-gaw ; 
but  still  likewise  do  we  need  the  plain  white  shroud 
worn  by  the  Mummy,  four  thousand  years  ago. 
ft  Now  tell  me,  pray,  in  what  respect,  whether  in  the  far 
off  Age  of  the  Distaff  or  in  the  present  Age  of  Machin- 
ery, man  has  ceased  to  be  man? 

Whether  Richard  the  Lion  still  chases  the  pagans  on  the 
sacred  soil  of  Palestine,  or  whether  a  modern  states- 
man with  feet  of  clay,  (speaking  for  the  United  States, 
for  England,  France,  or  Germany),  calls  on  High  Heaven 
to  testify  to  the  justice  of  "our"  cause,  as  against  all  other 
causes  whatsoever,  wherein  does  the  story  differ,  wherein 
is  the  tale  new? 
fl  Is  there  other,  and  if  there  is  what  does  it  record  ? 


72  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

fl  There  always  was  and  always  will  be  places  on  this 
Earth  wherein  the  inhabitants   set  their  dogs  on  any 
stranger  whose  curiosity  leads  him  to  visit  them;  and 
they  may  even  be  American  dogs  at  that. 
Nay,  nay,  do  not  frown;  calmly  face  the  fact.     Before 
you  put  on  your  make-up  to  go  out  on  the  street,  it  will 
do  you  no  harm  to  take  a  look  at  yourself  in  the  glass, 
fl  Plagues   sweep   over   European   battlefields,   half   the ; 
population  perishes;  war  desolates  Belgium  or  Serbia; 
fields  are  tilled  or  untilled ;  crops  ripen  ,or  crops  rot ; — 
what  does  it  all  mean,  or  does  it  mean  anything,  and  what 
about  it? 

Do  you  not  see  that  man  has  a  dual,  nay  a  many-sided 
nature,  and  with  equal  joy  now  loves,  now  fights,  now 
prays  ? 

He  is  not  inconsistent  in  this.  He  is  very  human,  in- 
deed. 

And  while  to  the  casual  eye  it  seems  as  tho  for  the  time 
being  Death  confers  a  monopoly  on  all  human  thought, 
at  the  same  time  to  offset,  this  Parliament  or  that  Con- 
gress solemnly  pass  resolutions  declaring  that  there  "shall 
be"  no  more  wars,  and  the  churchmen  proceed  to  raise 
great  funds  for  the  erection  of  imposing  new  steeples ; — 
and  mankind,  weary  of  war,  now  unites  in  psalm-singing 
and  in  uplifting  monuments  to  God. 
ff  Enee,  meenie,  minee,  mo— what  do  you  make  out  of  it  ? 

§      §      § 
fl  As  long  as  man  is  man,  these  three  things  will  he  do : 

Fight,  love  and  worship.  And  these,  then,  are  his 
supreme  occupations,  "what"  he  regards  as  most  im- 
portant, taking  him  at  his  own  private  reckoning. 
In  this  regard,  ten  thousand  years  see  him  still  hunt  his 
food,  seek  the  woman  always,  and  look  for  a  sign  in  the 
skies, 


MEN'S  LITTLE  WAYS  73 

All  reactions,  all  protests,  all  new  knowledge  find  him  in 
three  particulars  unchanged ;  and  if  these  three  do  not 
limit  man's  progress  at  least  they  define  clearly  his  nature. 
He  must  fight  because  to  struggle  is  the  universal  law  of 
life ;  he  must  love  because  sex  attraction  is  the  strongest 
stimulus  known  to  man,  turning  him  from  one  labor  to 
another,  one  revenge  to  another,  one  cruelty  to  another, 
one  sacrifice  to  another,  one  mercy  to  another,  sounding 
the  heights  and  depths  of  life,  from  brutal  murders  to 
spiritual  aspirations,  all  in  the  name  of  love ;  and  finally, 
man  must  seek  his  sign  in  the  skies,  because  man  is  essen- 
tially a  religious  animal  and  if  he  cannot  worship  a  god 
will  worship  gold,  or  power,  or  woman's  beauty — or  will 
worship  himself. 

§      §      § 

fl  What  then  is  this  thing  called  national  history,  as  re- 
vealed by  the  human  kaleidoscope  ?  From  age  to  age,  its 
aspects  vary  as  we  change  our  point  of  observation,  but 
on  close  examination  we  find  that  it  is  always  stuffed 
with  the  identical  bits  of  colored  glass — that  at  one  mo- 
ment make  the  pretty  cross,  at  the  next  the  devil's  tripod. 


XI 

ALL  MEN  AT  HEART  TYRANTS 

fi  Tyranny  is  a  natural  characteristic  of  mankind, 
likewise  love,  likewise  hate:  and  few  men  pass 
thru  the  years  without  abusing  love  or  hate:  also, 
it  is  well  to  remember  that,  in  spite  of  the  flatter- 
ies of  history-mongers  Nations  are  but  crowds 
of  men,  exercising  freely,  tho  under  cover,  all 
the  faults,  frailties  and  obsessions  of  the  human 
animal.  .  .  . 

fl  Man  is  so  constituted  that  he  is  able  to  justify  his  con- 
duct, always,  whether  it  be  a  coronation  or  a  crucifixion. 
The  singular  fact  is  that  men,  like  nations,  at  times  endure 
with  extreme  patience  conditions  that  seem  well-nigh 
intolerable;  insults  are  passed  over  lightly,  while  deep 
wrongs  go  unavenged ;  or  upon  frivolous  pretexts  or,  in- 
deed, for  no  adequate  reason,  men  or  nations  plunge  head- 
long into  war. 

fl  There  comes  the  inevitable  day  when,  taking  affairs 
into  his  own  hands,  man's  parchments  lettered  with 
"whereas"  this  and  "whereas"  that,  signed,  sealed  and 
delivered  with  solemn  forms,  become  so  much  chaff  to 
be  blown  away  by  the  first  wind. 

His  recorded  idealisms  of  brotherhood  gives  way  to  an 
obsession  to  kill.  Later,  the  demon  of  war  dies  in  his 
breast  and  once  more  he  turns  his  solemn  gaze  in  the 

74 


MILK  OR  LIQUOR?  75 

direction  of  the  Promised  Land,  in  which  the  peoples  of 
this  earth  are  to  be  united  in  the  bonds  of  liberty,  equality 
and  fraternity. 

fl  In  considering  now  what  is  commonly  called  National 
History,  as  recorded  for  the  delectation  of  all,  let  us  not 
be  befogged ;  but  let  us  hold  ever  before  us  the  image  of 
men  and  their  little  ways. 

Thus,  we  will  not  go  far  adrift,  nor  will  be  troubled  too 
much  in  a  vain  quest  for  "reasons"  why  certain  events 
turned  this  way  or  that,  at  a  given  moment,  then  swung 
back  again  as  time  passed  away. 

Real  history,  if  it  ever  is  written,  must  be  bulwarked 
upon  human  nature; 'the  ruling  passion  at  a  given  mo- 
ment: whether  the  national  stomach  craved  milk  or 
liquor;  how  the  people  felt;  what  this  people  re- 
garded as  important;  what  went  on  in  their  heads,  or 
what  was  wrong  with  the  national  liver ;  whether  scowl- 
ing or  joyous,  sulky  or  frivolous;  what,  in  short,  the 
people  felt  like  doing,  whether  to  sing  and  pray,  or  to 
drink  alcohol  till  frenzied  to  kill. 

Regardless  of  their  parchments  and  their  constitutions, 
what  did  they  hold  essential,  and  how  did  they  proceed 
— these  are  some  of  the  questions. 

ff  A  Nation's  physical  and  psychical  fibres  are  precisely 
like  your  own  physical  and  psychical  fibres;  and  even 
as  you,  no  matter  what  your  conduct,  proceed  to  set  your- 
self in  the  most  reasonable  light  to  your  own  proper 
justification  and  to  save  your  pride,  likewise  with  na- 
tions whatever  is  put  in  operation  whether  of  benevolence 
or  greed  is  always  to  be  taken  for  granted. 
Treaties  are  made  and  unmade — do  you  wish  examples  ? 
Laws  are  solemnly  recorded  to  be  upheld  or  broken,  as 
the  spirit  moves— do  you  question  this?  Study  your 
newspapers  for  a  week, 


76  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

Prayers  are  uttered — to  bolster  up  one  side  or  the  other 
side.  Do  you  doubt  that  God  was  on  the  side  of  the  North, 
because  Grant  had  the  better  Commissary  Department, 
and  not  on  the  side  of  the  South,  because  Lee's  army 
was  starving? 

§      §      § 

fl  To  lay  the  axe  at  once  at  the  root :  tyranny  is  a  natural 

characteristic  of  mankind,  likewise  love,  likewise  hate, 
and  few  men  pass  through  the  years  without  abusing  love 
or  hate ;  also,  it  is  well  to  remember  that  nations  are  but 
men,  multiplied  by  thousands. 

The  survey  shows  the  imperfection  of  life  or  the  possi- 
bility of  the  perfectability  of  life,  as  you  will,  but  it 
shows  primarily  men's  ways. 

fl  There  is  no  science  about  it.  Possibly  there  may  be 
such  a  thing  as  a  scientific  method  in  endeavoring  to 
gather  up  the  "materials"  of  history  (or  for  that  matter 
forty-odd  scientific  methods),  but  as  for  the  "thing  in 
itself,"  this  thing  called  History,  or  historical  writing, 
disguise  the  fact  as  you  will,  it  does  indeed  attempt  to 
deal  harmoniously  with  confusion,  riot,  carnival,  comedy, 
tragedy — as  you  like  it. 

fl  Volumes  have  been  written  to  prove  just  "why"  we 
defeated  Great  Britain  in  Colonial  days,  but  the  real 
reason  is  because  we  desired  so  to  do  and  hated  hard 
enough  and  were  strong  enough  and  fortunate  enough 
to  bring  our  wish  about.  We  stole,  or  annexed,  or  pur- 
chased— as  you  will — California  from  Mexico  because 
we  had  the  opportunity,  nay  made  the  opportunity  and 
were  glad  of  the  opportunity ;  and  if  one  day  the  United 
States  flag  floats  from  the  North  to  the  South  Pole  it 
will  be  because  that  is  our  ambitious  wish  as  a  nation,  and 
not  because  we  find  justification  in  this  or  that  docu- 
ment in  the  archives. 


"REASONS"  77 

ft  You  see,  man  is  always  able  to  set  forth  his  "reasons," 
whether  for  a  coronation  or  a  crucifixion. 
He  justifies  his  conduct  by  making  up  his  mind,  this  way 
or  that  way ;  and  making  up  one's  mind,  with  a  nation  as 
with  an  individual,  is  indeed  a  simple  matter.  By  ignor- 
ing one  line  of  facts  and  laying  emphasis  on  another  line 
of  facts,  presto  the  thing  is  done. 


XII 
THE  PROFOUND  FALLACY 

fl  That  Nations  exist  to  do  good  to  mankind  is 
easily  proven:  all  that  is  required  is  for  you  to 
close  your  eyes  and  accept  as  inspired  what  is 
termed  the  Nation's  history,  .  .  . 

fl  Well,  the  historians  of  the  after-years  survey  the  situ- 
ation, as  nearly  as  may  be,  and  in  due  course  bring  forth 
this  or  that  parchment,  this  or  that  treaty,  this  or  that 
law;  and  we  are  gravely  informed  that  what  the  Nation 
did  at  that  particular  moment  was  "right." 
Ponderous  volumes  are  then  written  to  prove  whatever 
has  been  set  up ;  whereas,  all  this  trouble  might  be  saved 
if  we  looked  upon  history  as  indeed  the  record  of  men 
and  their  little  ways,  that  is  to  say  human  nature,  in 
action. 

fl  Was  the  so-called  annexation  of  Texas  right  or  wrong  ? 
Was  the  war  with  Mexico,  in  the  *4o's,  right  or  wrong? 
Was  the  construction  of  the  German  Empire  right  or 
wrong?  Was  the  up-building  of  the  British  Empire, 
with  its  long  record  of  protectorates,  seizures,  spoliations 
of  war,  and  reprisals,  right  or  wrong? 
fl  Who  knows  ? 

jj  These  situations,  and  hundreds  more,  freight  the  shelves 
with  book  after  book,  and  our  National  pride  is  increased 

78 


HISTORICAL  BEAUTY-DOCTOR  79 

when  we  read  that  we  are  "justified,"  and  our  conduct 
is  "right." 

fl  The  plain  fact  is  that,  whenever  possible,  men  will  do 
what  they  like — nations  likewise. 

At  one  time  we  overflow  with  love  and  affection,  at  an- 
other unbridled  hate  runs  away  with  us ;  and  as  no  human 
being  is  consistent,  neither  is  any  nation  consistent. 
And,  on  the  whole,  there  is  no  reason  why  a  nation  should 
be  consistent. 

A  hundred  and  one  considerations  of  policy,  law,  order 
are  swept  away  in  an  instant,  in  your  own  life,  and  you 
fight. 

Later,  you  sit  down  to  a  game  of  chess,  wondering  how 
you  could  have  been  concerned  about  a  trifle.  Consider 
well  your  own  private  history  and  do  not  spare  your- 
self. 

Do  not  try  to  walk  on  stilts ;  yes,  for  once  come  down  to 
earth  where  you  belong. 

fl  Why  then  make  a  demi-god  of  a  nation,  in  historical 
writings,  protesting  that  the  National  course  is  based  on 
high  ideology  ? 

The  queer  thing  about  it  is  that  nobody  is  deceived, 
altho  all  must  pretend  to  be  deceived. 

§   .  §       § 

fl  What  peculiar  psychological  something  is  gratified  when 

Society  tricks  herself  out  in  feathers  and  gee-gaws  and 
stands  looking  at  herself  in  the  historical  beauty-doctor's 
mirror?  To  be  told  that  the  disfiguring  mole  is  gone, 
that  the  white  hair  still  retains  its  gloss  and  sleekness, 
that  the  hollow  cheeks  have  been  rounded,  the  crow's- 
marks  ironed  out — reply  O  stars,  on  what  it  all  means, 
fl  The  great  saints  are  carved  out  of  the  greatest  sin- 
ners; and  it  is  not  improbable  that  our  finest  epics  on 
repentance,  brotherly  love  and  international  disarmament, 


8o  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

expressed  in  Hague  peace-reports,  will  spring  from  the 
lips  of  National  leaders  who  in  war  did  wholesale  mur- 
der, by  machinery. 

Once  our  brutal  obsessions  are  gone,  we  are,  as  individ- 
uals or  as  nations,  the  noblest  of  our  kind ;  and  the  great 
War  of  1914  will,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  be  followed  by 
unprecedented  church-building  and  an  era  of  poetizing 
on  the  virtues  of  brotherhood. 

The  higher  you  rise,  the  harder  you  fall;  likewise  the 
higher  the  spiritual  rebound,  after  brutal  passion  is  spent. 
And  no  man  is  more  repentant  or  sees  more  clearly  his 
duty  to  his  fellow-man  than  he  who  the  day  before 
turned  himself  into  a  maniac  with  wine, 
ff  The  De  Profundus  of  nations,  recording  abstract  senti- 
ments of  brotherly  love,  will  usually  be  found  to  be  neither 
more  nor  less  than  cause  and  effect ; — vivid  allegations  of 
marvelous  future  good,  originating  in  deep  past  wrongs. 
We  see  nothing  improper  in  this,  nor  do  we  set  it  up  here 
as  a  defect.  Men  will  be  men,  so  why  conceal  the  fact 
longer  ? 

ff  Fighting,  loving,  praying ;  everything  by  turn  and  noth- 
ing long ;  from  demi-god  to  imbecile ;  from  rattle-box  to 
prayer-book  and  beads;  such  is  that  glory  and  that  jest, 
man. 

§       §       § 

f[  On  that  day  of  universal  acknowledgment,  men  will  no 
longer  care  to  befool  either  themselves  or  their  fellow- 
kind,  by  setting  up  mock-heroics. 

A  new  type  of  history,  far  more  honest  than  any  that  has 
yet  appeared,  will  then  be  ushered  in,  for  men  as  well 
as  for  nations. 

The  new  type  of  record,  based  on  the  stark  realism  of 
human  nature,  will  save  worlds  of  ink  and  paper — to 
say  nothing  of  the  eyesight  of  historians.  It  will  also 


THE  ARMY  CHAPLAIN  81 

help  us  to  go  forward  if  that  is  what  we  wish ;  because 
then  we  will  no  longer  deceive  ourselves  numbering  our 
spurious  virtues. 

To-day,  under  the  microscopic  methods  in  vogue,  history- 
mongers  are  forced  to  turn  the  pages  of  innumerable 
parchments,  dust-laden  and  obsolete. 
These  fatiguing  investigations  are  premised  on  the  pro- 
found fallacy  that  nations  are  consistent,  and  that  nations 
are  twice  alike. 

Were  this  a  fact,  the  card-index  system  of  writing  history 
were  indeed  correct. 

To  know  the  "facts"  is  at  all  times  essential,  but  to  make 
yourself  believe  that  you  will  find  somewhere,  embalmed 
in  law  and  parchment,  in  treaties,  in  speeches,  in  I  know 
not  what,  ultimate  reasons  "why"  this  or  that  nation 
did  this  or  that  at  a  precise  moment  in  its  history,  is  to 
say  that  you  know  all  about  the  moons  of  Jupiter — if 
indeed  Jupiter  has  moons, 
fl  History  is  human  nature,  in  action. 

§       §       § 

fl  For  a  thousand  years,  men  have  endeavored  by  self- 
flatteries  to  link  their  lives  with  the  gods.  For  this,  the 
breed  of  historians  is  largely  responsible;  every  Nation 
has  its  chaplains  to  offer  prayers  before  the  battle,  ex- 
pressing the  mystic  belief  that  God  is  on  "our"  side. 
flAnd  regardless  of  man's  proud  brag  of  passing  still 
another  life  on  a  distant  star,  man  reserves  for  himself 
in  this  life  the  use  of  the  fagots  and  the  lash. 
fl  Despite  this  lapse,  man  is  always  able  in  "history"  to 
leap  the  gulf  between  promise  and  performance,  between 
spiritual  anxieties  as  to  the  state  of  his  soul  and  his 
"practical"  every-day  interests. 

fl  Never  forget  that  what  man  consistently  continues  to 
do,  in  spite  of  all  the  high  brag  of  the  historians,  is  to 


82  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

go  on  loving,  go  on  hating,  go  on  eating,  go  on  fighting, 
and  go  on  praying. 

fl  He  is  not  inconsistent  in  doing  these  opposed  things. 
fl  He  is  merely  acting  like  a  human  being, 
jf  And  this  will  be  the  theme,  as  worked  out  one  day  in 
the  newer,  truer  type  of  history,  the  only  true  history 
helping  us  forward. 

fl  Perhaps  you  do  not  like  it,  but  what's  the  odds  ? 
jf  How  very  dull  this  world  would  be  if  all  men  were  of 
identical   opinions,   and  bayed   to  the  moon   the   same 
hymns. 

flAs  one  of  the  immediate  results  of  the  great  War  of 
1914,  it  has  been  stuck  under  our  noses  that  many  of 
our  smug  human  pretenses  will  have  to  be  revalued, 
marked  down  a  bit;  yes,  in  many  cases  even  put  on  the 
bargain  counter.  It  was  no  doubt  a  great  moral  shock, 
but  in  the  end  it  will  do  us  good,  like  the  sudden  plunge 
in  cold  water,  before  breakfast. 

Many  of  our  historical  pretenses  are  now  seen  to  have 
been  based  on  pure  cant;  also,  that  our  historical  high 
brag  went  too  far  ahead  of  our  morals. 
In  the  past,  we  always  pictured  ourselves  as  we  wished, 
and  obliging  historians  have,  like  industrious  photograph- 
ers, retouched  the  National  negative  till  it  was  reduced 
to  a  lovely  putty-like  smoothness,  with  all  the  human 
wrinkles  eradicated. 

Men  for  years  had  been  saying,  "All's  well  with  the  world, 
all  problems  settled,  brotherhood  around  the  corner." 
And  men  made  themselves  victims  to  this  absurd  his- 
torical method  of  retouching. 

fl  These  "p's"  are  always  in  order  in  "history" :  Pompos- 
ity, Pretense,  Passion,  Prejudice. 

Now  add  Prunes  and  Prisms  and  you  have  the  circle 
complete. 


"LEST  WE  FORGET!"  83 

ff  Also  "history"  often  turns  out  to  depend  on  whether 
you  are  shouting  for  your  side  or  are  booing  the  enemy. 
The  British  mob  goes  crazy  over  the  Kaiser,  but  might 
just  as  well  turn  loony  over  the  French,  if  say,  wind  was 
still  blowing  the  way  it  blew  in   1900,  when  Parisian 
journalists  fairly  burst  blood-vessels  in  literary  excite- 
ments over  the  British  attitude  in  the  Boer  war. 
fl  Ene,  meenie,  minie,  mo — well,  what  about  it  ? 
Nothing  only  this :  that  the  human  animal  likes  to  retouch 
his  picture  to  flatter  his  National  pride :  and  we  in  Amer- 
ica have  done  the  same,  even  as  has  the  Teuton,  the 
Frenchman  and  the  Russian. 

It's  all  very  human  but  it's  all  very  unhistorical,  else  we 
must  get  a  new  name  for  "history." 
Do  we  really  mean  to  go  on  believing  that  "history"  is 
an  aggregation  of  boosters,  intent  on  high  brag,  far  ahead 
of  our  morals? 
Ene,  meenie,  minie,  mo,  it  may  well  be.    Who  knows. 

§       §       § 

fl  We  dislike  to  be  forced  to  add  that  of  late  years  the 
"great"  National  historian  is  usually  president  of  some 
arson-gang.     He  makes  a  business  of  burning  National 
ideals  that  are  not  "his"  Nation's  ideals. 
For  example,  under  the  war  spirit  of  1915,  Kipling  noisily 
harangued  anybody  who  would  listen,  avowing:    That 
the  Germans  would  rape  the  women  of  the  Island,  if  the 
opportunity  came,  and  that,  anyway,  the  Germans  were 
cowards.    Now,  pray  "what"  is  history  ? 
For  this,  he  is  often  given  gold  medals,  and  his  name  is 
taught  to  the  schoolchildren. 
He  is  regarded  as  a  "great"  man. 

§       §       § 

flln  times  of  peace  the  kept-historian,  beginning  in  the 
cellar  of  the  Congressional  library,  literally  reads  his  way 


84  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

to  the  garret,  informing  himself  on  all  the  "authorities"  on 
his  topic;  what  every  living  and  dead  scribbler  babbled 
and  cackled  on  the  subject.  By  some  extraordinary  feat 
of  brute  strength,  he  pieces  these  together  for  the  edifi- 
cation of  his  fellow  countrymen. 

fl  The  work  often  takes  years  and  is  known  as  "monu- 
mental."   It  is  like  the  Pyramids.    Those  who  come  after 
marvel  at  the  gigantic  labors  involved  but  wonder  what 
'twas  all  about,  or  why  it  came  into  being, 
fl  One  fact,  however,  is  always  clear ;  the  ways  of  mere 
human  animals  have  no  place  in  his  "history."    There  is 
everything  in  it,  except  men  and  their  little  ways. 
The  Patriot  is  represented  as  sitting  on  a  far-off  rock, 
sighing  for  his  Country,  but  he  has  ceased  to  be  a  human 
being.     He  is  now  a  demi-god. 

It  is  said,  with  solemnity,  that  at  the  battle  of  Monmouth, 
Washington  used  the  word  "Damn"!  but  the  historian 
that  recorded  this  very  human  lapse  was  promptly  be- 
headed. This  seems  to  be  the  only  place  in  thousands  of 
pages  where  Washington  acts  like  a  human  being. 

§       §       § 

fl  The  great  war  has  forced  us  to  revalue  many  facts  we 
supposed  were  settled,  and  one  is  our  dehumanized 
methods  of  writing  "history." 

fl  The  idea  that  mere  man  has  anything  to  do  with  "his- 
tory" never  entered  the  heads  of  old-line  historians ;  man 
with  all  his  vices  and  his  feeble  virtues ;  man  the  political 
liar,  thief  and  visionary ;  man  the  opportunist ;  man  who 
poses  as  more  than  he  is,  but  who  crawls  on  his  belly  to 
the  temple  in  order  to  be  known  as  a  "nominal"  Christ- 
ian? 

fl  Why  not  use  these  well  known  situations  ? 
If  Because  these  things  are  too  uncomfortable.     What 
we  want  is  the  "uplift,"  even  if  we  have  to  censor  the 


HAVOC  AMONG  THIEVES  85 

news  to  such  an  extent  that  we  teach  our  children  lies. 
|f  Hence  it  is  a  favorite  practice  to  present  man  as  the 
"unconscious"  instrument  in  the  hands  of  the  Almighty, 
carrying  out  the  Almighty's  plans. 

|f  No  matter  "what"  man  does,  he  is  marching  forward. 
He  may  be  going  sidewise  or  backwards,  but  he  is  his- 
torically going  forward. 

|f  And,  of  course,  he  is  impelled  by  the  highest  altruistic 
ideas  in  all  his  wars,  historians  tell  us.  And  certainly  a 
kept-historian  ought  to  know  what  he  is  talking  about, 
ft  Did  it  ever  occur  to  you  how  one-sided  all  this  histori- 
cal glorification  of  Man  really  is  ?  We  read  worlds  about 
what  Man  thinks  of  himself,  and  what  Man  thinks  of 
Nature ;  but  would  it  not  be  a  relief  to  be  able  to  read — 
just  for  once! — a  book  showing  exactly  what  Nature 
thinks  of  Man? 

|f  Man's  idea  of  "history"  is  to  write  something  to  flatter 
his  pride,  sound  his  brag  or  boost  his  boast.  Since  the 
beginning  we  have  been  doing  that  very  thing. 
|f  If  he  burns  Joan  at  the  stake,  in  one  generation,  and 
in  the  next  has  her  canonized  as  a  saint,  he  is  not  acting 
as  an  inconsistent  human  beast  who  not  long  ago  crawled 
on  all  fours  but  now  walks  upright.  Not  at  all,  instead, 
he  is  exhibiting  the  "mysterious  ways  of  history,"  whose 
final  revelation  is  of  a  destiny  on  some  distant  star. 

§       §       § 

If  Man  dearly  loves  to  present  himself  as  a  superior  cre- 
ation, vastly  more  knowing  than  the  frog  or  the  zebra; 
and  if  you  ask  him  he  will  tell  you  so,  himself. 
|f  His  historians  spend  years  in  spinning  their  intellectual 
cobwebs  to  prove  that  all's  well  with  this  earth,  only  to 
find  that  man  is  man,  and  that  he  loves,  hates,  fights  and 
prays,  as  the  fancy  moves  just  as  he  always  did,  all  the 
historians  of  this  earth  notwithstanding. 


86  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

fl  All  that  the  old-line  historians  ask  us  to  do  is  this : 

Close  our  eyes  to  coronations  succeeded  by  crucifixions, 

and  remember  that  man  is  a  superior  being,  but  do  not 

judge  him  by  his  acts. 

fl  It  is  not  "historical"  to  judge  a  man  by  what  he  does ; 

the  thing  is  to  judge  him  by  what  he  says  in  his  books 

on  religion,  morals,  politics,  and  in  the  editorial  page  of 

your  favorite  newspaper. 

If  At  least,  therein  you  will  find  (manufactured)  man's 

higher  destiny. 

§       §       § 

fl  There  is  a  vast  amount  of  "history"  that  leads  to  down- 
right ignorance  and  should  be  rightly  excluded  from 
library  shelves:  is  it  not  time  that  some  new  method  be 
used,  wherein  man  can  glimpse  himself  somewhat  as  he 
is?  The  great  war  has  forced  us  to  recognize  many 
shams  and  pretensions,  especially  in  old-time  historical 
methods. 

In  the  new  type  of  history,  based  on  human  nature,  man 
will  be  depicted  as  man,  with  all  man's  faults  and  (pos- 
sibly) a  few  of  his  virtues. 

ff  You  feel  the  morning  breeze  of  the  new  time,  wherein 
a  man  does  not  need  to  cease  to  be  a  human  being  in 
order  either  to  make  or  to  understand  "history." 
ft  The  idea  that  history  should  ever  be  written  in  terms 
of  vice  and  virtue,  instead  of  cant  and  piffle,  National 
brag  and  quack — how  shocking  to  the  conventional  lies 
of  society! 

"How  very  weak  the  very  wise, 
How  very  small  the  very  great " 


fl  And  still  the  new  type  of  biographical  writing  does  not 
necessarily  mean  a  cynic's  book,  nor  yet  a  disillusion.    It 


THE  HUMAN  ANIMAL  87 

is  history  in  human  terms,  in  the  way  of  man's  life  as 
expressed  in  vice  with  an  occasional  glimpse  of  a  fleeting 
virtue. 

fl  And  having  done  with  vile  flatteries  based  on  enormous 
egotisms,  at  last  this  race  will  be  in  a  position  to  go  for- 
ward :  for  we  will  gull  ourselves  no  longer  as  to  "what" 
we  represent. 


XIII 
ALL  LIFE  A  BATTLE 

fl  Under  Nature's  inexorable  decree,  this  the 
price  we  pay  for  bread,  or  bone  or  breath:  that 
fight  we  must  from  sleep  to  sleep,  else  we  do  not 
survive:  whether  we  face  the  fact  manfully  and 
call  it  War,  or  instead  monger  in  meanings  till 
murder  masquerades  as  morality.  .  .  . 

flThe  air  at  this  moment  is  filled  with  war  and  rumors 
of  war.     One  hundred  years  ago  it  was  the  same;  and 
one  hundred  years  hence  it  will  be  the  same. 
If  Why? 

j[  War  is  usually  limited  to  battleships  and  bayonets,  but 
the  everyday  struggle  of  existence  means  war. 
Any  man  who  has  hunted  in  the  mountains  or  fished  in 
the  sea  will  tell  you  that ;  any  dog  knows  that  his  whole 
life  is  spent  in  endeavoring  to  keep  away  starvation ;  and 
in  order  to  live,  other  forms  of  life  must  perish. 
The  greatest  "pacifist"  kills  hundreds  of  animal-forms 
each  year,  and  as  for  militarism,  there  are  intimate  types 
of  militarism  that  are  associated  with  the  very  hopes  of 
your  own  heart. 

fl  Nay,  do  not  start  back  in  indignation. 
The  struggle  of  life  means  war  often  to  death ;  it  is  merely 
incidental  whether  that  scene  calls  for  the  loud  crack 

88 


FIGHTING,  LOVING,  PRAYING  89 

of  a  revolver,  or  the  wicked  glance  of  a  coquette  in  a 

crowded  ball  room. 

ft  The  trouble  is,  man  is  always  fooling  himself  with 

soft  words,  just  as  he  is  always  going  to  the  historical 

beauty-doctor,  and  as  he  is  always  looking  around  for 

some  fortune-teller  to  uphold  him. 

He  wishes  to  be  told  that  all  is  well  with  his  life. 

fl  Great  masses  of  the  population  pass  part  of  their  time 

in  giving  advice,  assuring  the  doubting  ones  that  all  is 

as  it  should  be. 

Men  who  make  a  religion  of  hope  and  good  cheer,  often 

attribute  to  optimism  the  consolations  of  a  superior  faith. 

§       §       § 

ft  Men  go  about  crying,  "Peace !  peace !"  But  there  is 
no  peace,  nor  can  there  be  peace ;  nor  is  there  any  good 
reason  why  there  should  be  peace. 

There  never  has  been  a  time  on  this  earth  when  there 
was  peace,  and  there  is  none  now. 

"How  small,  of  all  that  human  hearts  endure, 
That  part  which  laws  or  kings  can  cause  or  cure !" 
fl  Men  fight,  instinctively ;  and  may  the  day  never  come 
when  they  will  lose  their  fighting  edge. 
They  fight,  and  they  love  and  they  pray. 
Love  is  a  battle,  and  the  hunt  for  food  is  a  battle,  and 
existence  itself  is  a  struggle,   from  the  cradle  to  the 
grave. 

Men  must,  then,  give  thrust  for  thrust, 
ff  The  infant  struggling  toward  the  light,  opens  its  eyes 
upon  a  world  of  disorder. 

Did  the  infant  reason,  already  in  its  first  feeble  moments 
it  would  know  that  to  battle  is  the  decree  of  survival. 
A  hundred  foices  are  intent  on  destroying;  and  any  par- 
ent well  knows  the  anxieties  of  the  first  year,  in  rearing 
the  child. 


90  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

If  The  school  boy,  too,  must  do  battle.  On  the  play- 
grounds, as  well  as  in  the  classes,  the  lad  first  learns  the 
inequalities  of  life,  finds  that  his  mates  cannot  always 
be  depended  upon  to  play  on  the  square. 
Even  to-day,  a  member  of  the  team  is  plotting  to  lose 
the  annual  foot-ball  game.  This  fellow,  secretly  con- 
spiring to  be  made  captain,  failing  in  his  ambition,  de- 
cides on  reprisals  that  will  break  up  the  club. 
fl  The  young  man  dreams  of  what  he  misnames  love, 
that  is  to  say  the  dawning  of  the  instinct  of  self-preser- 
vation. Impelled  by  sex-instinct,  he  starts  out  on  a  new 
kind  of  war,  that  is  to  say  he  seeks  out  or  hunts  out,  as 
you  please,  his  young  companion. 

He  is  attracted  by  her  youth,  her  beauty  and  her  warm 
red  lips. 

At  night,  they  go  down  to  the  grove  and  caress  under  the 
light  of  the  moon.  The  struggle  is  on,  and  if  she  yields 
to  his  embraces  innocently  and,  as  they  say,  makes  a 
mistake,  poor  girl,  the  war  against  her  by  Society  later 
forces  her  to  throw  her  baby  into  the  river ;  it  may  even 
be  thru  the  ice  in  the  dead  of  winter  at  that ;  yes,  do  that 
very  thing,  even  in  this  city  of  a  thousand  steeples, 
fl  Her  life,  henceforth,  is  a  prolonged  battle  with  un- 
friendly social  elements  around  her.  You  may  not  call 
it  war,  but  it  is  war.  Call  it  what  you  please !  She  now 
has  a  bitter  taste  of  men  and  their  little  ways. 

§       §       § 

flBut  we  will  take  the  other  side,  and  we  will  say  that 
she  is  what  is  called  honorably  married  to  the  man  she 
adores.  For  this  rich  young  man's  favor,  did  she  not 
have  to  outdo  the  other  ambitious  young  women  of  her 
set? 

fl  Wearing  paint,  feathers  and  beads,  like  a  savage,  she 
calls  it  dressing  in  style.  The  day  comes  when  she  glories 


DICING  WITH  DESTINY  91 

in  the  defeat  of  her  rival.  Her  lips  curl  in  scorn,  her 
heart  beats  high  with  satisfaction.  She  has  gained  her 
object,  that  is  to  say,  she  has  repulsed  the  other  young 
woman  in  the  competitions  of  love.  Yet,  each  is  called 
a  moral  young  woman  of  the  period.  In  what  strange 
ways  men  use  words,  is  it  not  true? 

§       §       § 

ff  Years  roll  on,  and  the  former  frivolous  young  woman 
is  now  a  sober-minded  matron,  with  children  growing 
up  around  her.  She  engages  in  a  new  kind  of  struggle. 
Indeed,  it  comes  upon  her  at  unawares,  for  she  never 
imagined  herself  the  centre  of  such  a  conflict.  But  soon 
or  late,  it  comes. 

j[  She  now  plans  social  successes  for  her  children,  sends 
them  to  the  best  schools,  instructs  them  against  what 
she  calls  the  wiles  of  the  world. 

Her  heart  often  fails  her  as  her  son  is  away  late  at  night 
with  boisterous  companions. 

What's  to  become  of  her  son,  what  of  her  daughter?  If 
this  is  not  war  in  the  mother's  heart,  then  words  have  no 
meaning. 

fl  Well,  time  passes.  Her  son  becomes  a  victim  to  drink ; 
war  again  to  save  his  life ;  or  her  daughter,  now  entering 
upon  the  frivolous  age,  refuses  to  go  to  church.  Thus 
the  war  goes  on  and  on,  year  after  year.  This  incessant 
battling  wears  her  life  away. 

fl  Old  age  creeps  on  apace.  Now  begins  a  final  long 
struggle  with  disease.  Day  by  day,  she  finds  her  strength 
failing.  Little  by  little,  there  is  an  imperceptible  physi- 
cal and  mental  loss,  and  she  comes  nearer  the  inevitable 
end  that  awaits  all  mortals. 

She  recalls  the  state  of  her  soul.  She  suddenly  realizes 
that  there  are  a  hundred  obligations  that  in  time  gone 
by  she  neglected — neglect  of  her  parents — of  her  friends 


92  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

— of  her  church — neglect  of  the  poor  and  neglect  of  the 

plain  duties  of  passing  years. 

She  makes  a  last,  lone  fight  to  get  right  with  her  God. 

What  a  struggle  this  is,  to  be  sure.    It  racks  the  inmost 

fibres  of  her  being. 

Her  former  ambitions  in  the  main  now  seem  absurd,  her 

former  attempts  to  outdo  others,  her  vanity  of  dress,  the 

wasted  hours — war  is  upon  her,  a  last  long  terrifying 

war.    She  wishes  she  had  lived  otherwise ! 

§       §       § 

fl  Well,  the  rain  and  the  wind  and  the  frost  beat  down 
and  proceed  to  make  war  on  man's  last  resting  place.  The 
supposedly  imperishable  granite  marker  on  his  grave,  if 
closely  examined  after  twenty  years,  is  now  found  to 
be  crumbling ;  year  by  year,  the  chinks  made  by  the  frost 
are  deepened  by  the  persistent  polishing  of  flying  dust. 
And  each  winter  the  minute  crevices  fill  with  snow-water, 
the  frost  comes,  then  the  thaw,  and  the  subtle  forces  of 
nature  crack  the  stone. 

In  the  end,  the  very  mound  sinks  more  and  more  until 
it  is  again  level  with  the  sod. 

Thus,  in  ceaseless  but  imperceptible  warfare  of  Nature, 
all  trace  of  the  slim  little  mound  under  which  repose 
our  bones  is  obliterated.  Not  even  that  spot  is  secure 
from  inevitable  change.  War  even  here ! 

§       §       § 

fl  Under  Nature's  inexorable  decree,  we  must  fight — 
whether  we  call  it  war  or  by  some  milder  term.  Peace 
can  be  gained  only  through  war,  whether  it  is  the  peace 
of  National  honor  and  security,  bulwarked  by  rifles  and 
dreadnaughts,  or  whether  it  is  the  peace  that  passeth 
understanding,  in  your  immortal  soul,  when  you  have 
squared  your  black  life  with  your  fellow-man,  before 
Death  strikes  you  down. 


HONORS  OF  WAR  93 

flAnd,  after  all,  is  not  a  soldier  who  on  the  field  of 
battle  levels  a  rifle  at  your  heart,  more  honorable  than 
the  cowardly  stay-at-home  devil,  who  by  his  secret  scan- 
dalous words,  blasts  a  woman's  reputation,  it  may  even  be 
forcing  her  to  throw  her  babe  into  the  river. 
fl  Come,  what  do  you  think  ?  Why  not,  then,  a  new,  a 
more  honest  and  helpful  way  of  writing  history  instead 
of  longer  continuing  the  old-line  mush-gush? 


XIV  , 

WHY  WAR  PERSISTS 

fl  Even  to-day  in  your  petty  life  you  are  forcing 
your  advantages,  making  your  private  wars  for 
self  or  power,  seducing  your  women,  lying, 
stealing,  counting  your  gains,  indulging  your 
appetites,  building  your  great  castle  on  the  hill, 
forcing  your  rivals  to  capitulate;  and,  on  the 
whole,  are  conducting  yourself  to  advance  your 
own  ascendancy.  History  is  the  record  of 
human  nature,  in  action,  otherwise  the  struggle 
for  existence — war! 

fl  Everywhere,  we  behold  the  exertions  of  man,  individ- 
ually, to  sustain  himself  against  his  rival,  be  that  rival 
a  firm,  a  corporation,  a  political  party,  or  a  state. 
And  when  he  finds  conditions  not  to  his  liking,  he  sets 
about  it  to  change  them,  that  they  may  be  to  his  liking. 
His  attitude  he  justifies  in  various  ways ;  for  example, 
that  what  he  is  doing  is  for  the  good  of  others. 
ft  Washington,  great  patriot,  found  it  advisable  to  align 
himself  against  the  Government  at  the  time  in  power; 
hence,  we  cannot  even  set  up  the  fiction  that  patriotism 
is  the  ardent  support  of  your  own  Government,  at  all 
times ;  for  here  is  a  distinguished  man  who  achieved  im- 
mortal renown  by  denouncing  his  own  Government  for 
a  new  Government  based  on  political  rebellion  against  the 
powers  that  were. 

94 


PATRIOTISM  95 

However,  had  he  been  unsuccessful,  there  is  no  question 
that  he  would  have  been  shot  as  a  British  traitor. 
Had  British  arms  been  able  to  overcome  our  Fathers, 
signers  of  our  own  Declaration  of  Independence  would 
have  met  merciless  fate  at  the  hands  of  British  officialism, 
even  as  (1916)  Irish  leaders  who  fought  the  identical 
British  foe,  for  our  own  identical  reasons,  perished 
martyrs  to  liberty. 

jf  Well,  what  do  you  make  out  of  words,  then,  for  ex- 
ample such  words  as  patriotism  and  war? 
They  borrow  wholly  as  much  from  the  character  of  the 
strife  waged,  and  from  the  character  of  the  leader.  We 
are  prone  to  look  to  the  ultimate  utility  of  a  contest  for 
its  justification  rather  than  defend  the  brute  fact  of  the 
war  in  itself. 

Therefore,  be  not  surprised  to  learn  that  in  the  struggle 
for  existence  man,  in  his  individual  capacity,  will  lie  and 
steal  for  advantage ;  yet  the  fiction  is  set  up  that  Nations — 
which  are  after  all  is  said  but  aggregations  of  men — 
exist  to  do  good  to  the  world. 

We  repeat,  Nations  will  lie  and  steal;  and  there  is  no 
reason  why  we  should  be  surprised.  Why  expect  other- 
wise? 

ft  The  nature  of  the  human  animal  is  such  that  he  will 
not  yield  his  bone  without  a  battle,  and  will  in  turn,  when- 
ever possible,  take  the  bone  from  the  other  dog. 
The  politico-religious  romance  of  the  French  Revolution, 
with  its  dreams  of  liberty,  fraternity  and  equality  were 
succeeded  in  short  space  by  the  iron  hand  of  Napoleon, 
who  found  France  a  Republic  and  left  it  an  Autocracy. 
fl  Here  in  these  United  States  we  have  long  been  wont 
to  make  our  high  historical  brag  of  National  solidarity, 
as  against  the  world;  but  when  the  day  comes  that  a 
man  of  consummate  selfishness,  executive  and  military 


96  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

power  sees  his  advantage,  on  that  day  a  new  history  of 
these  United  States  begins. 

ft  You  say  that  certain  great  politico-social  facts  are  for- 
ever settled.    You  are  in  gross  error. 
Nothing  is  settled  as  long  as  there  are  two  men  and 
one  woman  on  this  earth,  or  two  women  and  one  man. 

§   .   §       § 

ft  National  boundaries  will  change  and  change  again ; 
creeds  rise  and  fall,  parties  come  and  go,  wealth  be 
heaped  up  here  or  there  only  to  be  scattered  far  and 
wide. 

In  each  generation,  in  the  struggle  of  the  human  animal 
for  supremacy,  a  new  Caesar  storms  the  walls  and  sacks 
the  city,  which  falls  under  the  new  supreme  will. 
A  thousand  times  history  informs  us,  soberly,  that  we 
have  entered  upon  the  Golden  Age — but  women  continue 
to  be  seduced,  children  cry  for  bread,  widows  robbed, 
and  fire  and  sword  scourge  the  land. 
We  are  disciples  of  "new"  dogmas  for  age  to  age ;  again 
and  again,  we  proclaim  that  in  the  future  we  see  only 
good;  and  we  throw  out  banners  to  the  breeze  and  cry 
in  the  market-place,  "At  last  we  are  done  with  wronging 
our  brother !"  We  support  the  "new"  dogmas  with  our 
very  life's  blood ;  we  die  on  the  battlefield  in  a  species 
of  delirium.  The  day  of  humanity,  tolerance  and  liberty, 
will  sweep  away  the  old  order  of  error,  folly  and  pre- 
judice. 
fl  For  the  time  being,  doubt  has  no  place  in  our  minds. 

§       §       § 

flWhen,  for  example,  we  read  the  "Rights  of  Man,"  as 
adopted  by  the  Assembly,  Aug.  26,  1789,  in  the  first  ex- 
citement of  the  French  Revolution,  we  wonder  that  ideas 
so  simple  should  have  required  the  baptism  of  blood  from 
lives  by  the  tens  of  thousands. 


NECKS  OF  THE  PROSTRATE  97 

ft  "Men,"  it  is  affirmed,  "are  born  and  remain  free  and 
equal  in  rights.  The  aim  of  all  political  association  is  the 
preservation  of  the  natural  and  imprescribable  Rights 
of  Man. 

fl  "Those  rights  are  liberty,  property,  security,  and  resist- 
ance to  opposition.  Liberty  consists  in  the  freedom  to 
do  everything  which  injures  no  one  else ;  hence,  the  nat- 
ural rights  of  each  man  has  no  limits  except  those  which 
assure  to  the  other  members  of  the  society  the  enjoyments 
of  equal  rights.  These  limits  can  be  determined  best  by 
law." 

§      §      § 

flWhat  is  there  about  all  this  that  is  not  commonplace, 
dull,  ordinary?  Yet  it  was  not  to  be  attained  without 
oceans  of  blood. 

ff  Let  us  continue,  more  specifically. 
j[  "No  person  shall  be  accused,  arrested  or  imprisoned 
except  in  accordance  with  the  forms  of  law.  .  .  .  The 
law  shall  provide  such  punishments  as  are  strictly  and 
obviously  necessary.  .  .  .  No  one  shall  be  disquieted  on 
account  of  his  opinions,  including  his  religious  views,  and 
the  freedom  of  communication  of  ideas  and  opinions  is 
one  of  the  most  precious  of  the  rights  of  man.  Each 
citizen  may,  accordingly,  write,  speak,  and  print  with 
freedom.  .  .  .  All  the  citizens  have  a  right  to  decide, 
either  personally  or  through  their  representatives,  as  to 
the  necessity  for  taxes,  and  to  know  to  what  use  these 
taxes  are  put.  .  .  .  '' 

fl  What  is  there  about  all  this  that,  were  men  reasonable, 
might  not  have  been  settled  by  common  consent  ? 
fl  Yet  within  ten  years,  that  is  to  say  November,  1799, 
when  the  Directory  was  overthrown,  and  Napoleon  be- 
come Consul,  there  was  little  left  to  bear  official  witness 
to  the  Republic  of  "Equality !" 


98  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

jf  Do  not  blame  Napoleon.   What  he  saw  was  an  "opening" 
for  a  man  of  talents :   and  "opportunity"  he  conceived  to 
be  the  basis  of  all  properly  constituted  social  order. 
We  have  long  made  our  brag  of  this  Republic,  "which  is 
opportunity !" 

fl  Napoleon  regarded  the  philosophical  dreams  of  Rosseau 
as  those  of  a  madman.  Napoleon  did  not  hold  for  one 
moment  that  the  rallying  cry  "Liberty !  Fraternity !  Equal- 
ity !"  offered  a  practical  basis  for  reconstructing  society, 
fl  After  the  turmoil  and  insecurity  of  the  Revolution, 
there  came  an  inherent  yearning  for  stability  and  reas- 
surance. 

fl  "We  must  have  eyes  for  what  is  practicable  and  real, 
in  the  application  of  principles,  and  not  for  the  specula- 
tive and  hypothetical,"  Napoleon  solemnly  declared,  at 
one  of  the  earlier  sessions  to  his  Council  of  State, 
fl  And  for  the  sake  of  France — such  was  his  plea — he  jus- 
tified all  his  boundless  cruelties. 

fl  He  set  up  the  fiction  that  "all"  he  did  was  for  "her 
good." 

ff  He  did  not  regret  the  excesses  of  the  Revolution :  the 
situation  offered  for  a  man  of  talent  "a  golden  oppor- 
tunity." 

fl  And  you  would  do  the  same  if  you  were  strong 
enough ! 

flEven  to-day  in  your  petty  life  you  are  forcing  your 
advantages,  making  your  private  wars  for  self  or  power, 
seducing  your  women,  lying,  stealing,  counting  your 
gains,  indulging  your  appetites,  building  your  great  castle 
on  the  hill,  forcing  your  rivals  to  capitulate ;  and  on  the 
whole,  are  conducting  yourself  to  advance  your  own  as- 
cendancy. 

fl  History  is  the  record  of  human  nature,  in  action.  In 
other  words,  it  is  the  struggle  for  existence — war! 


XV 
WHAT  O'CLOCK  WITH  THE  WORLD? 

fl  Deceive  yourself  no  longer  .  .  .  in  our  hypoc- 
risies of  history  we  are  prone  to  represent  that 
men's  ways  are  to  be  transformed  by  so  simple  a 
spectacle  as  Six  Joint  High  Commissioners,  in 
black  robes,  seated  in  solemn  conclave  at  the 
Hague  .  ,  .  surrounded  by  mounds  of  books 
and  papers  .  .  .  interpreting  what  henceforth 
shall  be  the  political  as  well  as  the  psychological 
basis  of  life. 

ft  But  let  us  go  into  this  thing  with  open  eyes :  not  prom- 
ising ourselves  too  much. 

That  our  natural  rivalries  and  animosities,  making  us 
love  or  hate  or  worship  will  be  less  manifest  under  Six 
High  Commissioners  in  black  robes,  or  green,  or  blue,  or 
in  all  colors  of  the  rainbow ;  or  that  the  Six  High  Com- 
missioners will  be  able  by  some  new  form  of  political 
or  moral  hypnotism  to  banish  War  .  .  as  well  say  that 
you  would  consent  to  arbitrate  an  insult  to  your  wife  or 
child. 

fl  Man  wishes  always  to  screen  his  real  nature  behind 
scrolls,  parchments  and  enactments  of  various  kinds,  duly 
signed,  sealed  and  delivered. 

He  will  always  tell  you  that  he  goes  into  the  slums  of 
the  world  with  his  armies  and  his  protectorates,  in  order 

99 


100  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

to  do  good  to  the  world ;  but  it  is,  for  example,  question- 
able whether  Britain  would  be  in  the  Transvaal  at  this 
hour  were  the  land  a  desert,  and  no  diamond  mines  or 
gold-reefs  there.  .  .  .  What  think  you? 
Nay,  do  not  disturb  your  tranquility ;  we  have  no  wish 
to  bring  up  controversial  subjects :  if  you  dislike  the  illus- 
tration, there  are  still  others  involving  any  other  nation 
you  may  select,  not  excluding  our  own  Republic. 

§       §       § 
fl  Now  about  this  war  business,  that  is  to  say,  your  own 

business.    Man  wars  on  the  animals  and  the  animals  war 
on  each  other:  but  the  crudest  wars  of  all  are  those  in 
which  man  wars  on  his  own  kind. 
We  talk  of  peace  yet  go  on  killing. 

The  noblest  ideologist,  walking  down  the  street,  dreaming 
of  the  Brotherhood,  indifferently  treads  on  tiny  insects 
that  chance  to  crawl  over  his  path;  and  the  swift-flying 
wheels  of  the  automobile  on  the  country  road  crush  at  un- 
awares innocent  black  beetles  or  diligent  ants,  slowly  trail- 
ing thru  the  dust. 

fl  Everywhere,  thruout  this  Earth,  hour  by  hour,  on  every 
side,  innumerable  evidences  proclaim  the  unceasing  strug- 
gle. 

Fittest  is  fittest,  despite  man's  high-blown  political  align- 
ments, professing  to  represent  the  upward  march  of  hu- 
manity; among  tigers,  the  tiger  with  sharpest  claws; 
among  eagles,  the  bird  with  tireless  wings;  but  among 
men  we  know  not  what  comprises  fitness :  for  of  a  fact 
fitness  has  to  do  with  the  way  an  animal  hunts  its  food, 
wins  its  mate,  rears  its  young. 

Even  a  dog  does  not  always  fight  for  his  bone.  There  are 
times  when  he  exercises  what  men  call  prudence.  After 
a  dog  has  starved  long  enough,  his  instinct  tells  him  that 
the  thing  to  do  is  to  bury  the  surplus  bone.  He  then 


WHEN  MAN  PRAYS  101 

proceeds  to  do  that  very  thing,  guided  by  a  sense  of  self- 
preservation. 

fl  With  man,  self -protection  takes  range  so  wide  that  it 
includes  miserliness,  generosity,  lying,  stealing,  truthful- 
ness, hypocrisy,  prayers,  tears,  dodging,  fighting  in  the 
open :  concealed  as  well  behind  the  lover's  kiss  as  behind 
the  villain's  curses. 

Then,  too,  the  military  hero  dies  bravely  in  battle  at  noon, 
gaining  imperishable  renown  as  it  is  called,  but  the  coward 
flinging  away  his  sword  and  fleeing  the  field,  extends  his 
life  from  noon  till  six  at  night.  This  is  only  another  way 
of  saying  that  no  act  high  or  low  is  foreign  to  human 
nature.  However  vile  or  however  glorious  your  conduct, 
you  never  cease  to  be  a  human  being.  We  are  common 
clay  tho  our  ends  are  wide  apart.  Whether  we  pray  or 
curse,  we  do  not  cease  to  be  at  war. 

§       §       § 

fl  What,  man  at  war  when  he  prays  ?  Impossible.  .  .  . 
He  is  at  peace,  truly,  at  peace. 

fl  It  may  well  be  that  he  seeks  what  he  calls  peace,  but 
he  is  at  war;  war  as  to  the  state  of  his  soul;  war  with 
the  overbrooding  night ;  with  the  grave  that  looms  before 
him;  with  disease  that  has  struck  him  down,  disease 
he  would  exorcise  with  prayers  told  off,  fast  and  faster 
still. 

fl  The  exquisite  anguish  of  the  Wars  of  Prayer  exceed 
the  agonies  of  the  battlefield,  with  all  its  crimson  gore 
in  the  long  trenches :  because  agony  is  of  the  body, 
anguish  of  the  spirit ;  and  beyond  the  telling  are  the  Wars 
of  the  Spirit,  directed  against  a  misspent  life ;  against  the 
ingratitude  of  those  who  should  remember,  or  uttered  to 
save  an  erring  son  or  daughter;  the  sentiment  that  is 
behind  the  candle  placed  in  the  window,  night  after  night, 
that  the  wandering  boy  may  return;  the  sentiment  that 


102  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

has  to  do  with  endeavoring  to  console  ourselves  and  to 
be  meek  in  the  forgetfulness  of  fathers  for  sons,  sons 
for  fathers;  all  too  late,  the  long  lonesome  Wars  of  the 
Spirit,  carried  forth  in  the  cloister,  in  the  darkness,  under 
the  midnight  stars,  on  the  beach  before  the  sea  that  re- 
plies only  with  a  moan ;  these  are  the  wars  that  whiten 
the  face  and  kill  the  body  which  must,  however,  still  live 
on  and  suffer  to  the  end; — these  frightful  Wars  of  the 
Spirit,  tho  screened  from  the  gaze  of  the  sun,  go  on  un- 
ceasingly around  us,  hour  by  hour ;  because  of  the  brutish 
dispositions  of  men  and  man's  satire  on  Brotherhood, 
thus  far  largely  a  vision  and  a  dream.  .  .  .  And  he  who 
tells  you  that  in  the  dim  corner  of  the  church  where 
the  women  are  praying  before  the  shrine  and  the  candles, 
in  that  lonesome  spot  with  its  spectral  shadows  and  its 
ominous  silence,  he  who  tells  you  we  repeat  that  in  this 
place  is  peace,  knows  not  the  meaning  of  the  human 
heart.  He  who  prays  is  engaged  in  the  long  lonesome 
War  of  the  Spirit,  whose  anguish  is  not  reckoned  in  the 
number  killed,  missing  or  wounded — but  by  frightful 
solitudes,  alone  with  his  God. 

§       §.     § 

fl  Thus  you  see  the  folly  of  discussing  War  as  an  affair, 
exclusively,  of  cannon  balls.  Instead  War,  the  thing  in 
itself  is  deeply  rooted  in  our  very  nature.  Without  being 
anything  in  particular,  War  is  everywhere  and  always; 
it  is  not  an  expression  of  a  definite  thing  but  it  sinks 
its  roots  deep  in  the  subsoil  of  our  common  nature. 
j[  War,  we  repeat,  has  thus  no  special  face  or  form,  sys- 
tem or  reckoning.  As  we  have  just  shown  you,  some  of 
the  greatest  wars  are  unknown  to  historians,  unsung  by 
poets,  unrecorded  in  brass  or  stone,  but  instead  are  en- 
graved only  in  the  secret  recesses  of  the  human  heart  .  .  . 
and  if  you  doltishly  insist  that  we  cease  speaking  in  rid- 


WHAT  SWORD  SEEK  YE?  103 

dies  and  that  your  scientific  mind  requires  objective 
evidences  of  "what"  we  refer  to,  then  in  God's  name  do 
so  simple  a  thing  as  visit  our  churches,  read  our  daily 
newspapers,  look  at  our  photoplays  there  in  the  semi- 
darkness  alone  with  your  conscience,  or  go  out  among 
your  friends  and  try  to  number  their  scars,  received  in 
this  peculiar  business  known  as  the  Battle  of  Life  .  .  . 
then,  chastened  by  what  you  see  and  hear,  no  longer  make 
a  mock  of  the  plain  evidence  brought  to  your  brain. 

§       §       § 

ft  Do  you  not  admit  it,  in  secret  ?  Come  now,  all  your 
life  have  you,  yourself,  not  been  seeking  the  sword  that 
Fate  has  seemingly  deprived  you  of  ?  Surely  there  must 
be  some  special  type  of  human  power  that  you  demand, 
some  ambition  to  give  or  take,  or  do  or  dare ;  some  great 
idea  involving  a  struggle,  to  be  gained  only  by  pushing 
somebody  out  of  your  path  .  .  .  ?  Come,  be  frank  for 
once.  Or,  do  you  expect  us  to  believe  that  your  Manna 
fell  from  Heaven? 

ff  "What"  you  represent  is  very  simply  told :  fighting, 
loving,  praying  sum  up  man's  career  from  sleep  to  sleep, 
and  this  regardless  of  your  proud  brag  that  you  are  more 
than  a  man  in  your  intercourse  with  men ;  for  you,  too, 
no  doubt  have  often  felt  yourself  called  on  to  make 
changes,  affecting  other  men's  lives,  that  is  to  say,  to  con- 
quer your  rival  in  love  or  business,  or  to  drop  a  coin  in 
the  poor-box,  or  to  endow  a  hospital — after  you  have 
enough  left  for  yourself. 

You  made  war  to  get  your  money;  you  arm  yourself 
with  a  club  to  keep  your  property,  otherwise,  soon  you 
will  have  no  property  to  keep  ...  or  if  you  prefer  to 
talk  of  reforming  a  drunkard  or  leading  a  sinner  to  sal- 
vation, even  there  a  great  War  is  on  your  hands,  brother ; 
else  you  fail  miserably. 


104  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

The  struggles  to  support  righteousness  go  on  unceasingly 
and  the  battles  against  entrenched  wrong  call  for  the  zeal 
of  martyrs.  .  .  .  War,  war  everywhere,  call  it  by  what 
softer  name  you  please. 

§       §       § 
ft  Human  life  without  war — what  a  strange  idea,  what 

a  form  of  hypocrisy.    Does  man  really  believe  it,  and  if 
so,  how  does  he  go  about  to  prove  it  ? 
However,  this  is  not  to  say  that  man  does  not  change 
his  style  of  giving  battle. 

While  seemingly  becoming  less  coarse  in  his  warfare,  he 
is  in  reality  more  barbarous;  he  utilizes  the  noblest  in- 
ventions— wireless,  aeroplane — to  help  murder  more  sci- 
entifically, by  machinery. 

flA  hundred  exquisite  forms  of  butchery  still  exist  in 
these  United  States. 

Religious  toleration  is  promised  in  the  Constitution,  but 
the  preacher  cannot  stay  unless  he  preaches  the  type  of 
sermon  we  wish. 

Political  equality  has  been  ordained  a  thousand  times, 
but  the  war  still  goes  on — and  must  go  on ! 
Nations  through  their  presidents,  kings  or  parliaments 
proclaim  on  paper  that  they  do  exist  to  do  good  to  man- 
kind ;  and  this  in  the  face  of  their  plain  self-interests. 

§       §       § 

ft  Mankind  is  always  visiting  the  kept-historian  and  pays 
the  nimble  silver-piece  the  more  readily  in  proportion  as 
the  spook  promises  riches,  love,  fame  and  fortune. 
At  the  theatre,  when  at  the  supreme  moment  the  villain 
makes  a  confession  against  himself,  the  audience  gives 
a  little  gasp  of  astonishment.  "What  a  great  man  he 
was,  after  all,  an  honest  man !" 

Val  Jean,  hearing  that  another  is  falsely  accused  in  his 
stead,  goes  to  Paris  to  give  himself  up,  although  he  might 


THE  HONEST  CAT  105 

have  kept  away;  and  at  the  court  scene,  women  weep 
and  men  stand  aghast  at  the  extraordinary  picture — an 
honest  man ! 

fl  What  o'clock  with  the  world  ?  Is  the  sun  as  high  in 
the  heavens  as  we  think,  and  are  we  on  the  march ;  or  are 
we  still  asleep  in  our  beds,  our  minds  a  bat's  cave  of 
dreams  ? 

§       §       § 
ffWhy  should  we  quarrel  with  man,  for  being  man? 

These  promises  that  man  sets  forth,  on  paper,  these  al- 
leged peace-treaties,  these  protestations  of  undying  friend- 
ship, between  individuals  or  nations,  should  be  regarded 
rightly  as  man's  peculiar  province  in  enacting  his  plain 
role  of  man ; — that  is  to  say,  peculiar  type  of  animal  that 
gains  prey  by  strategy,  instead  of  righting  in  the  open. 
In  this,  man  does  not  share  the  tactics  of  the  bulldog. 
This  noble  dog  springs  to  the  attack  without  calling  on 
God  to  bear  witness  to  the  justice  of  his  cause. 
The  bulldog  never  sets  forth  that  his  wars  are  in  the 
interest  of  humanity,  but  are  frankly  for  the  personal 
possession  of  the  coveted  bone. 

The  cat  does  not  sit,  hymn  book  in  hand,  singing  beside 
the  mouse's  hole;  but  with  instinctive  and  undisguised 
cunning  she  waits,  breathless,  hour  after  hour,  murder  in 
her  heart. 

These  are  forms  of  honesty  that  are  foreign  to  man's 
nature;  he  has  not  claws  like  the  cat  nor  jaws -like  the 
bulldog.  For  these  weapons  he  substitutes  writings  in 
the  form  of  hymns,  treaties,  and  creeds  that  set  forth 
with  solemn  protestation  man's  superiority  to  Nature  in 
this,  that  man  exists  to  do  what  he  calls  good  to  the 
world;  and  it  follows  that  however  grotesque  his  con- 
duct— as  a  nation  or  an  individual — he  is  always  able  tp 
justify  his  deeds  as  inspired  of  the  love  of  Godr 


106  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

fl  We  see  no  reason  why  things  should  be  otherwise ;  it 
is  too  much  to  hope  that  man  will  ever  make  open  con- 
fession against  himself. 

And  for  that  matter,  if  we  are  to  confide  in  our  Father 
Confessor,  note  this  peculiarity  known  to  priests  who 
have  churches — out-of-the-way  churches — near  the  depots 
of  great  cities  where  men  and  women  come  and  go  always 
in  haste,  leaving  no  trace  behind. 

These  are  the  priests  who  hear  the  frightful  heart-secrets 
of  young  women  about  to  become  mothers  outside  the 
law;  thieves,  murderers,  graveyard  ghouls;  all  manner  of 
peculiar  human  animal  types — claws,  teeth,  jaws,  and 
bowels. 

The  woman,  closely  veiled,  takes  a  long  railroad  journey, 
to  find  a  safe  confessional,  thus  strangely  sought  out. 
In  fifteen  minutes,  she  is  again  on  the  train,  her  mind 
relieved  that  she  had  the  courage  to  make  a  confession 
against  herself. 

fl  Thus,  even  in  humility,  man  employs,  in  extreme  cases, 
his  cunning  to  prevent  the  plain  fact  becoming  known — 
that  he  is  a  man  and  acted  like  a  man ! 
The  one  thing  that  he  will  not  do — man  or  nation — is  to 
stand  forth  in  all  the  stark  realism  of  his  estate. 
fl  His  prayer  should  read  like  this : 
It  is  a  glorious  thing  to  be  a  man,  and  to  live  like  a 
man,  and  to  do  like  a  man ; 
I  am  a  man ; 

I  seek  my  self-interest  night  and  day; 
I  live  by  plunder. 

fl  These  three  things  are  of  my  estate  since  time  began : 
I  hunt  my  woman ; 
I  kill  my  enemy; 
I  worship  my  God. 
fl  Let  the  world  know  the  glad  tidings. 


XVI 
BLOOD  WILL  TELL 

fl  From  the  beginning,  there  never  was  a  time 
when  there  was  peace  on  this  Earth,  nor  is  there 
peace  here  and  now.  .  .  .  Not  the  fact  of  War, 
but  the  way  in  which  I  make  War,  that  is  the 
question! 

fl  We  do  not  ask  any  man  to  believe  what  is  here  recorded 
simply  because  before  his  eyes  is  a  pattern  in  printer's  ink 
on  a  sheet  of  paper. 

Believe  it  not,  unless  it  comports  with  your  experience  in 
life  and  squares  with  your  common  sense. 
fl  This  we  hold  as  fundamental :  that  what  a  man  will  do, 
depends  on  his  breed. 

fl  You  have  been  for  three  days,  without  food  or  drink, 
lost  in  the  Arizona  desert.  There  are  now  only  a  few 
gulps  of  water  left  in  your  canteen.  Your  partner  is  at 
your  side,  also  your  dog. 

Would  you  (come  now,  what  say  you),  drink  one  swal- 
low and  hand  over  the  canteen  to  your  partner,  that  he 
might  have  his  share,  or  would  you  gulp  it  all  and  let  him 
perish  ? 

fl  There  are  men  who  would  divide  the  last  drop  of  water, 
even  in  a  burning  desert,  death  hovering  near ;  even  give 
some  to  the  dying  dog. 

However,  there  also  are  men  who  would  drink  it  all, 

107 


io8  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

stab  the  other  man  to  death  to  prevent  him  from  getting 
a  share,  later  also  killing  and  eating  the  dog. 
fl  "What"  you  do,  depends  on  your  breed. 

§       §       § 

fl  Not  long  ago,  a  party  of  gold-seekers,  lost  in  the  Alas- 
kan wilderness,  found  themselves  facing  starvation.    The 
food  supply  was  perilously  low ;  the  game  had  left  the 
mountains ;  the  snows  were  deep ;  the  trail  was  blind. 
The  men  bound  themselves  by  oath  to  try  to  live  on  quar- 
ter-rations, till  a  way  out  was  found, 
fl  It  was  not  long,  however,  before  in  a  most  unaccount- 
able way  the  food  began  disappearing  in  small  quanti- 
ties. 

fl  Who  was  the  guilty  wretch  ?  Suspicion  ran  through 
camp.  Each  man  glowered  at  the  other,  murder  in  his 
heart;  but  there  were  no  accusations:  it  was  not  to  be 
settled  that  way. 

A  council  was  held  and  each  starving  gold-seeker  swore 
a  black  oath,  "I  am  not  the  guilty  man !" 
fl  On  the  fourth  morning,  a  half-crazed  miner,  who  had 
been  dreaming  of  roast  chicken,  oysters  and  champagne, 
while   slowly    dying   of   cold   and    starvation,    suddenly 
started  in  his  sleep,  and  in  that  instant  was  as  wide  awake 
as  though  it  were  noon  instead  of  pitch-black  night. 
By  the  dim  light  of  the  aurora  raw  and  cold  he  saw 
something  bulky  and  black,  bending  over  the  food-supply. 
At  first  he  thought  it  was  a  wolf,  but  it  was  a  man. 
Before  dawn,  each  morning,  one  of  the  party,  while  his 
companions  slept,  quietly  slipped  over  to  the  food  supply 
and  secretly  helped  himself  to  part  of  the  other  men's 
share;  then  rolling  himself  in  his  blanket  pretended  to 
be  asleep. 

With  an  oath,  the  miner  sprang  from  his  blanket  and 
sounded  the  alarm,  catching  the  thief  in  the  act } 


THE  YELLOW  STREAK  109 

ft  They  decided  to  kill  him,  then  and  there ! — stood  him 
up  against  a  lonesome  pine! — and  disregarding  his  pleas 
for  mercy,  fired  fourteen  shots  ! 

In  his  unfair  fight  with  hunger,  the  thief  had  showed 
the  yellow — and  lost.  They  left  his  carcass  for  wolves. 

§       §       § 

fl  This  one  thing  you  can  set  down  as  the  straight  of  it, 
proven  since  Time  began:  Soon  or  late,  men  find  their 
level,  high  or  low ;  soon  or  late,  the  yellow  streak  will 
show  .  .  .  soon  or  late,  by  the  wilderness  campfire, 
or  in  the  Arizona  desert,  we  get  our  trial. 
What  if  it  should  turn  out  that  you  are  the  man  lost  in 
the  desert,  the  one  who  murders  his  companion  in  order 
to  get  for  himself  the  last  drop  of  water  in  the  can- 
teen .  .  .  ?  Or,  if  not  you,  might  I  not  be  that  man 
myself  .  .  .  ?  Who  knows  what  tests  you  or  I  may  yet 
be  called  on  to  withstand,  in  spite  of  all  our  present  high 
moral  brag?  How  do  I  know  that  I  would  stand  the 
test  .  .  .  ? 

Or,  what  if  it  should  turn  out  that  you,  poor  miserable 
dying  devil,  are  the  one  who  under  cover  of  night  filches 
the  crumbs  to  keep  your  belly  warm,  whilst  your  mates 
are  dying  of  starvation  and  cold,  in  the  Alaskan  wilder- 
ness back  of  Nome  .  .  .  ?  Or,  if  not  you,  might  I  not 
be  the  man,  myself  .  .  .  ?  Who  knows  ? 
For  in  the  last  lone  fight  with  death,  the  great  primal  law 
of  hunger  is  supreme ;  stronger  than  laws  of  man  defin- 
ing property  rights ;  stronger  than  law  of  God  which 
says,  "Thou  shalt  not  kill !" 

jf  About  all  we  can  hope  is  this :  That  as  Time  passes, 
little  by  little  men  will  see  that  since  fight  we  must  it 
is  better  to  fight  fair:  but  the  full  realization  of  this 
hope  is  at  present  largely  an  iridescent  dream.  Still,  it 
is  a  hope  and  a  promise  for  a  better  day. 


no  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

As  long  as  there  are  human  yellow  dogs,  so  long  will 
the  yellow  streak  remain :  how  long  it  will  take  to  breed 
it  out,  or  if  it  can  be  bred  out,  no  man  on  this  Earth 
to-day  is  wise  enough  to  know. 

And,  in  the  meantime,  this  one  thing  you  can  set  down 
as  the  straight  of  it,  proven  true  since  Time  began :  soon 
or  late,  men  find  their  level,  high  or  low;  soon  or  late, 
the  yellow  streak  will  show ;  you  get  your  trial,  soon  or 
late ; — and  how  you  will  face  it  remains  to  be  seen. 


XVII 
THE  CELESTIAL  BIOGRAPH 

Wast  thou  fain,  poor  father, 

To  hovel  thee  with  swine  and  rogues  forlorn 

In  short  and  musty  straw? 

fl  Says  the  steward  to  Kent  in  King  Lear,  "What  dost 
thou  take  me  for  ?"  And  Kent  answers : 
ft  "A  knave,  a  rascal,  an  eater  of  broken  meats,  a  base, 
proud,  shallow,  beggarly,  three-suited,  hundred-pound, 
filthy  worsted  stocking  knave ;  a  lily-livered,  action-taking 
knave ;  a  glass-gazing  superserviceable,  finical  rogue ;  one- 
trunk-inheriting  slave — " 

fl  And  that  is  not  all.    It  is  only  a  part  of  what  Kent 
says. 

fl  So  it  will  be  with  the  new  type  of  history,  as  against 
the  old :  it  will  all  come  out  of  the  Great  War,  and  it  is 
for  you  to  say,  not  me,  how  great  the  gain  will  be ;  at  least 
we  will  have  a  chance  to  improve  by  study,  for  we  will 
no  longer  flatter  ourselves  to  death. 
fl  It  is  easily  possible  for  a  Nation  to  vaunt  itself  proud, 
at  the  same  time  secretly  hoveling  with  swine,  in  the  dirty 
straw. 

The  great  War  of  1914  has  brought  this  gloriously  home, 
even  to  the  dullest  onlooker. 

ft  As  one  of  the  beneficent  results  of  the  European  War, 
may  it  not  come  to  pass  that,  scorning  the  high  brags  of 

in 


112  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

history-mongers,  the  world  will  demand  henceforth  that 
the  thing  to  do  in  the  history-scribble  is  to  put  man  in 
the  record,  not  leave  him  out ;  nor  yet  to  adorn  his  brow 
with  a  golden  circlet,  while  finding  him  living  in  a  swine- 
sty. 

fl  We  have  talked  much  of  this  history-thing,  as  writ, 
but  there  now  comes  to  mind  this  ultimate  test: 
Before  me  like  a  dream  rises  the  episode  called  the  Last 
Day,  whereon  free  from  flatteries  man  is  to  be  judged. 
He  is  to  be  judged  not  as  he  imagines  he  is,  nor  as  he 
would  like  to  appear,  nor  as  he  has  been  in  the  habit  of 
parading  himself,  thru  the  kindness  of  his  history-mong- 
ers :  but  as  he  is,  in  that  way  is  he  to  be  judged. 
We  shall  then  and  then  only  discern  clearly  the  immense 
gulf  between  life  as  secretly  lived  by  men,  and  as  recorded 
by  men  in  their  special  records  called  history  and  biog- 
raphy. .  .  . 

flAnd  on  this  Last  Day,  this  one  honest  day  that  we 
refer  to,  high  in  the  clouds  the  assembled  hosts  take  their 
places  in  the  vast  aerial  amphitheatre,  before  their  startled 
eyes  the  gigantic  Celestial  Screen. 

On  this  mirror  first  is  flashed  man's  account  of  himself 
as  set  forth  in  prose,  poem  and  triumphal  arch. 
Then  the  trumpet  blows  and  man's  pitiful  pretenses  in 
his  histories  fade  away,  followed  by  stern  reality,  as 
against  mortal  mockeries  .  .  .  flashing  across  the  can- 
opy of  Heaven,  before  the  speechless  multitudes,  there 
suddenly  shine  forth  individual  living  pictures  judging 
in  turn  all  mortals  here  below,  likewise  all  nations ;  show- 
ing exactly  what  you  did  from  the  cradle  to  the  grave; 
and  what  I  did;  and  my  neighbor  did;  and  what  this 
woman  did  and  what  that  woman  did:  so  the  records 
of  the  Nations  of  the  earth,  as  against  their  historical 
hypocrisies. 


MONSTROUS  IDEA  113 

fl  In  fast-flying  Celestial  scroll,  surpassing  in  marvelous 
detail  all  records  of  man's  invention  here  and  now  one 
by  one,  man  for  man,  woman  for  woman,  are  judged 
in  naked  moral  realism :  covering  thus  the  human  race, 
depicting  on  the  Celestial  Screen  this  earth-life,  in  all 
its  secret  recesses,  as  contrasted  with  man's  high  flat- 
teries in  favorite  histories  and  biographies.  .  .  .  Each 
of  us  has  his  turn  and  no  man's  life  is  spared  nor  any 
Nation's  life. 

§      §      § 

fl  Do  you  think  you  could  find  words  strong  enough  to 
express  the  bottomless  gulf  between  our  conventional 
human  records,  in  books,  for  humans  to  read  about  them- 
selves, and  the  astonishing  revelations  of  the  Celestial 
Biograph,  unrolling  there  in  all  its  naked  realism,  amidst 
the  frozen  silence  of  the  earth's  hosts,  each  man  in  a  par- 
oxysm of  terror  awaiting  the  moment  when  his  own  name 
shall  be  called,  and  his  individual  photo-play  flashed  in 
gigantic  outlines  before  the  eyes  of  the  world-hosts,  cov- 
ering every  secret  act  of  his  life  as  against  his  cloak  of 
worldly  pretense  and  pious  protestation  .  .  .  ? 
fl  "For  one,  I  hope  it  will  never  come  to  pass.  No  all- 
merciful  God  could  do  anything  so  cruel.  ...  Is  it  not 
a  monstrous  idea  ?"  I  hear  a  voice. 

What  you  really  mean,  brother,  in  asking  me  if  it  is  not 
a  monstrous  idea,  is  this:  Your  thought  is  another  of 
the  inherent  hypocrisies  with  which  man  surrounds  his 
heart's  secrets. 

fl  Yes,  indeed,  it  is  a  monstrous  idea,  brother — that  men 
should  ever  be  forced  to  look  on  the  truth  about  them- 
selves. 


XVIII 
WHAT  THEN  IS  "HISTORY"? 

The  search  for  evidences  of  "manifest  destiny, 
in  the  history  of  nations,  is  a  favorite  pastime  of 
history-mongers;  the  paradox  wherein  the  hu- 
man masquerades  as  superhuman. 

fl  That  a  spiritual  by-product  flows  from  the  life  of  the 
individual  to  exalt  the  life  of  the  community;  that  this 
influence  is  more  than  nominal,  remaining  even  after  the 
individual,  as  for  example  political  teacher,  has  vanished 
from  the  earthly  scene;  and  that,  crystallized  into  Na- 
tional ideals,  this  immaterial  by-product  goes  forward 
from  generation  to  generation ; — such  is  the  earnest  belief 
of  thousands  of  Americans  to-day. 
Not  only  Americans  in  America,  but  Germans  in  Ger- 
many, Britons  in  the  Isles,  Celts  in  France,  and  Tartars 
in  Russia. 

fl  In  America,  some  tell  us,  we  are  endeavoring  to  give 
serious  unity  to  that  particular  conception  of  political 
brotherhood  known  as  "democracy,"  and  hence  are  intol- 
erant of  a  line  of  kings — in  the  fond  hope  that  we  may 
each  be  our  individual  king. 

fl  Also,  that  we  do  indeed  move  with  God's  guidance. 
Millions  of  Americans  thus  hold  to  the  political  dogma 
that  the  voice  of  the  people  is  the  voice  of  God. 

114 


MAN'S  PROUD  BRAGS  115 

If  The  question  is,  Can  our  history  be  thus  truthfully 
represented  ? 

To  prove  or  disprove  these  allegations  of  manifest  des- 
tiny it  becomes  necessary  to  leap  a  wide  gulf. 
We  must  demonstrate  that  every-day,  nominal  conduct, 
once  crystallized  in  customs,  adhered  to  by  large  groups 
of  men,  becomes  by  that  very  form  of  ancientism  some- 
thing superhuman.  Are  we  ready  to  accept  this  belief 
after  a  close  scrutiny  of  our  social  ideals? 

§       §       § 
|f  Do  not  forget  that  the  black  drop  in  our  history  has 

made  wholly  as  much,  historically,  as  has  the  red  drop. 

f[  Fighting,    loving,    praying — eating,    drinking,    feeling. 

What  does  it  all  mean,  or  does  it  mean  anything  we  can 

find  out,  by  "historical"  methods? 

Are  we  prepared  to  prove,  for  example,  that  man's  life 

is  of  exceedingly  great  importance,  as  against  that  of  all 

other  animals? 

Has  man  any  immunity  from  accident  not  shared  by  a 

dog? 

ft  Were  man's  high  boast  true,  would  we  choose  the  ends 

that  come? 

Would  one  deliberately  cross  the  street,  to  be  run  down 

by  a  fast-flying  automobile? 

Would  another  elect  to  put  his  funds  in  a  bank  that  the 

cashier  wrecks  by  speculation? 

Would  one  select  ptomain  as  a  dressing  for  his  fish? 

Would  another  bid  his  friends  good-bye,  to  take  passage 

on  an   ill-starred   Titanic,  whose  bow   crashes  into  an 

iceberg? 

fi  To  be  born,  to  struggle,  to  grow,  to  suffer,  to  decay,  and 

finally  to  die — such  is  the  common  fate. 

§       §       § 
fi  Man  is  always  passing ;  time  is  always  staying. 


n6  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

fl  What,  then,  is  history  ? 

History  is  the  record  of  human  nature,  in  action ;  a  never- 
ending  series  of  coronations  and  crucifixions;  yet  there 
are  men  who  survey  this  picture  of  chaos  and  tell  you 
with  great  earnestness  that  it  is  all  "leading  to  an  ap- 
pointed end." 

flWe  have  no  science  of  human  nature:  we  know  the 
intimate  lives  of  bees,  butterflies  and  wolves;  but  the 
human  heart,  though  only  a  foot  away,  remains  largely 
unknown.  Must  it  be  forever? 

fl  Man  jealously  stores  up,  in  books,  his  progress  in  the 
arts  and  sciences,  ever  building  wider  temples  on  the  ruins 
of  the  past. 

But  with  whole  libraries  freighted  with  "human  nature," 
as  set  forth  in  histories,  dramas,  sermons,  novels,  and  in 
newspapers,  the  list  does  not  include  a  working  knowl- 
edge of  "human  character,"  except  in  gross  form, 
fl  The  plain  truth  is  that  while  man  is  slowly  conquering 
the  earth,  the  air  and  the  sea,  he  knows  no  more  of 
"human  nature"  than  he  did  in  the  days  of  the  Mummy. 
Man  explores  Africa,  seeks  the  Pole,  charts  the  millions 
of  stars,  and  reads  the  history  of  the  Universe  in  a  grain 
of  sand. 

In  invention,  he  is  in  truth  a  new  Creator — not  yet,  how- 
ever, realizing  the  full  force  of  the  Scriptural  injunc- 
tion, "A  new  Heaven  and  new  Earth,"  but  in  a  very  real 
sense  building  his  own  heaven  and  earth. 
Through  the  brain  of  Science  man  wrests  Nature's  se- 
crets from  her,  one  by  one,  and  reconstructs  out  of  the 
debris  of  the  Past  a  temple  of  Progress  grander  than  any 
known  of  olden  days. 

fl  At  the  same  time,  the  human  heart,  though  only  a  foot 
away,  is  practically  unexplored,  and  its  true  history  is 
known  only  in  shadowy  glimpses. 


WITH  THAT  WHITE  DAWN  117 

It  is,  in  short,  not  too  much  to  say  that  men  know  all 
things,  except  themselves. 

§       §       § 

fl  Man  certainly  knows  more  of  bees  and  ants  than  he 
does  of  his  fellow  kind. 

Scientists  who  have  thought  deeply  on  ants  can  tell  you 
what  an  ant  will  do  throughout  its  entire  life;  but  the 
wisest  man  cannot  say  what  any  human  being  will  do, 
even  tomorrow. 

fl  In  your  own  case,  do  you  know  what  test  you  will  be 
called  to  meet  tomorrow,  and  how  you  will  front  it? 
For  one  man  is  foolish,  another  wise;  one  is  prudent, 
another  a  spendthrift;  one  is  an  invalid,  another  surly 
and  bigoted,  despised  even  by  his  own  family ; — and  thus 
the  types  multiply. 

And  some  men  scatter  gifts  as  they  go,  while  other  men 
are  always  looking  around  to  collect  toll. 

§       §       § 

fl  In  some  far  off  time,  man  may  yet  come  to  know  his 
own  brother — the  man  at  his  elbow! — and  great  will  be 
the  wisdom  thereof,  and  great  the  rejoicing  in  the  land. 
Should  the  white  dawn  ever  break  when  there  is  wider 
human  understanding  between  the  top  and  the  bottom  of 
society,  the  basis  of  true  progress  on  this  earth  is  at  hand. 
The  criminal  and  the  judge,  the  master  and  the  servant, 
the  shepherd  and  the  king,  the  drunkard,  the  thief  and 
the  glutton,  the  leper  and  the  athlete,  will  be  found  of 
identical  mortal  dust;  each  in  some  special  sense  brave, 
free  and  strong — if  each  could  be  made  to  understand. 


XIX 
THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

The  stupendous  cannonading  along  European 
trenches  finds  deadly  parallel  in  shot  and  shell 
now  crashing  thru  the  human  mind,  the  world 
over,  riddling  our  most  cherished  Mumblings 
expressed  in  History  and  Biography,  as  related 
Before  the  Great  War.  Therein,  what  virtues 
did  we  not  measure,  taking  us  at  our  own  word! 
The  dialogue  here  following  has  for  its  sole 
purpose  the  implied  suggestion  of  wider  study: 
ground  that  is  not  plozved  brings  forth  no  har- 
vest. Likeivise,  the  Great  War  should  not  be 
allowed  to  come  and  go  without  warning  us  that 
History  as  heretofore  written  has  on  the  whole 
been  a  curse  and  not  a  help  to  us,  has  tricked  us 
with  extravagant  expectations  founded  often 
enough  on  fraudulent  intent  and  in  flat  rejection 
of  human  nature ;  and  being  told  in  deliberate 
disregard  of  plain  lessons  of  experience,  quite 
naturally  must  always  end  in  disappointment. 

fl  Was  all  this  glory  real,  that  we  read  about  before  the 
Great  War?  This  interdenominationalism,  international- 
ism, and  all  the  other  isms?  .  .  .  this  hands-across-the- 
sea  business?  .  .  .  those  ideals  of  brotherhood  based  on 
politico-religious  idealism?  .  .  .  that  brag  about  "surer" 
religious  freedom  under  one  flag  than  under  another? 

118 


HOVELING  WITH  SWINE  119 

.  .  .  this  guaranteeing  something,  we  know  not  what, 
under  one  Nation  rather  than  under  another? 
|f  And  we  freighted  shelves  with  books  mountains  high, 
wherein  we  proclaimed  our  vainglorious  ideals  of  the 
sawdust  brotherhood,  now  alas  gone  to  smash. 
|f  War  is  a  merciless  revealer  of  individual  as  well  as 
National  shams  and  quackeries;  and  if  therefore  all  the 
peculiar  moral  glories  of  which  we  prated  in  the  smug 
Nineteenth  Century  were  not  real,  then  who  was  respon- 
sible for  the  telling,  and  what  the  motive  behind  the 
deception?  Why  should  man  wish  to  trick  himself  as 
to  "what"  he  represents?  If,  however,  the  scribblings 
were  realities,  likewise  the  mumblings  of  brotherhood, 
they  must  still  be  real,  tried  by  promise  against  perform- 
ance. .  .  ? 

fl  Or  was  it  all  merely  some  trumped-up  thing,  some  glit- 
tering befoolment  composed  of  politico-religio  dingle- 
dangles  manufactured  to  bolster  up  the  conventional  lies 
of  a  conventional  world?  Alas,  Germany,  Britain, 
France,  Italy,  nay  not  excluding  that  proud  classification 
Greater  Britain  Overseas,  alas,  too,  America,  in  spite  of 
thy  kept-writers  and  their  denials — 

Wast  thou  fain,  poor  father, 

To  hovel  thee  with  swine  and  rogues  forlorn 

In  short  and  musty  straw? 

§       §       § 

fl  Surprising  as  it  may  seem  to  honest  folk,  this  square" 
headed  rapscallion  Greusel  stands  his  ground,  even  after 
"I"  pointed  out  to  him  the  absurdity  of  his  new-fangled 
history-thing:  stuck  to  it  that,  henceforth  in  writing  about 
Great  Personages  or  Nations  the  test  should  be  not  how 

great  they  were,  but  how  low  they  sunk Fi! 

|f  Didst  ever  hear  of  crank  so  erased?  Everything  worth 
while  that  ever  was  in  the  world  is  still  with  us,  say  I! 


120  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

fl  Greusel's  idea  seems  to  be,  in  general,  that  if  a  man 
knows  his  faults  there  is  a  fighting  chance  that  with  pa- 
tience and  discipline  he  may  correct  them,  but  certainly 
will  not  improve — if  flattered  to  death.  All  very  promis- 
ing on  paper,  to  be  sure,  but  we  live  in  a  "practical" 
world  and  should  sustain  as  far  as  possible  the  Settled 
Order,  don't  you  think? 

fl  May  I  cut  in  by  remarking,  as  known  to  all  honest  men, 
that  we  have  long  been  endeavoring  to  standardize  our 
Civilisation  as  it  were,  to  certify  to  our  babies,  our  pure 
milk,  our  wives,,  our  daughters,  nay  by  Heavens  to  our 
optimism  and  to  our  very  patriotism.  Read  the  Presi- 
dent's Message;  and  would  his  Excellency  ask  blessings 
if  we  were  not  a  Chosen  People  and  had  not  kept  the 
Commandments? 

§       §       § 

fl  On  the  other  hand,  in  all  decency,  should  not  "history" 
be  bulwarked  on  men's  ways?  Why  not  begin  now  by 
writing  a  new  type  of  history  by  putting  man  in,  instead 
of  by  keeping  him  out  and  imagining  what  he  ought  to 
do  and  say?  History  is  neither  more  nor  less  than 
human  nature  in  action,  the  record  of  life  as  it  is. 
j[  Hence,  with  Nations  as  with  individuals,  it  is  well  not 
to  make  too  many  promises  if  we  expect  to  keep 
them.  .  .  .  Omit  no  faults,  frailties  or  obsessions,  in- 
clude also  a  few  paragraphs  on  such  feeble  virtues  as 
man  displays  at  long  intervals,  in  his  brief  and  troubled 
journey  across  the  track  of  Time.  This  at  least  would 
provide  a  type  of  history  from  which  we  would  not  need 
back  down;  the  other  kind  turned  out  to  be  poor  stuff; 
we  closed  our  eyes  to  our  hoveling  with  swine  and  ex- 
alted our  virtues  to  the  skies ;  coming  at  least  to  believe 
we  are  a  Chosen  People,  and  that  our  very  historical 
mock-  heroics  are  ordained  of  God. 


ARE  WE  A  CHOSEN  PEOPLE?     121 

fl  One  does  not  need  an  Old  Testament  imagination  com- 
posed of  frightful  wraths  and  worlds  crashing  to  de- 
struction in  hell-fires,  to  realize  that  our  old-time  accounts 
of  ourselves  in  our  pet  histories  were  mighty  failures  as 
records  of  humans.  All  is  now  shot  to  pieces,  along  with 
the  5,000,000  dead  that  do  fill  the  trenches.  .  .  .  For 
mark  you,  the  Great  War  has  forced  us  to  face  in  all  its 
nakedness  the  world  in  which  we  live,  making  sudden 
and  stupendous  end,  in  flashes  of  dynamite,  to  those 
last  historical  rags  of  pride  wherewith  we  were  wont  to 
flaunt  ourselves  and  proclaim  our  brags  and  our  conceits ; 
now  have  we  naught  to  cloak  our  bodies  with,  from  the 
winter's  storms.  .  .  .  The  expulsion  of  our  First  Par- 
ents from  the  Garden  has  been  exemplified  anew. 

§       §       § 

fl  From  this  point  the  mountebank,  with  brazen  effront- 
ery, tries  to  make  us  believe  that  what  we  call  history 
instead  of  being  quite  naturally  something  to  support  our 
pride,  our  individual  as  well  as  National  dignity,  should 
on  the  contrary  be  something  entirely  different.  I  blush 
to  tell  you  how  this  churl  carries  on!  All  I  can  make 
out  of  it  is  that  he  must  have  been  fed  on  sour  milk,  in- 
his  youth;  that  he  idled  away  his  time  wandering  from 
place  to  place  without  visible  means  of  support,  as  it 
seems,  with  a  term  or  two  at  the  rock  pile  now  and  then 
to  break  his  spirit;  that  quite  naturally  he  came  to  the 
place  where  he  now  eyes  all  honest  men  with  suspicion; 
trying  with  his  damned  innovations  to  affront  and  insult 
us,  and  to  undermine  our  faith  in  all  the  good  things  his- 
torians have  been  put  to  so  much  pains  to  tell  about  us, 
in  days  gone  by. 

fl  /  quote  his  vile  speech  not  because  I  believe  a  word  of 
it,  but  that  you  may  see  how  madness  tilts  the  brain,  in 
war-times. 


122  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

fl  Nay,  make  no  grievous  error ;  what  we  have  heretofore 
lived  by  we  live  by  no  more ;  our  smug  moralities  have 
found  us  out;  the  game  is  ended;  the  score  is  chalked 
where  all  may  read ;  the  moving  hand  has  written.  .  .  . 
For  we  built  ourselves  a  beautiful  Garden  of  Lies,  and 
called  it  our  Garden  of  Eden.  And  we  invented  our  pig- 
trough  history,  representing  ourselves  as  an  angel  with  a 
revolver  in  its  hand;  and  we  learned  to  look  on  it  as 
something  good,  to  go  by,  and  to  live  by.  .  .  .  Men  talk 
of  "history,"  as  tho  it  were  some  profoundly  unattainable 
record  reserved  only  for  year-long  search  by  students 
pouring  thru  the  archives,  but  the  simple  Old  Testament 
borrows  a  tremendous  advantage  over  all  the  books  man 
writes  and  calls  histories;  for  the  Old  Testament  is  the 
only  history  in  which  man  is  called  to  his  face  hypocrite, 
liar  and  thief.  .  .  .  And  man,  reading  these  plain  words, 
marvels  at  them  and  not  wishing  to  make  a  confession 
against  himself,  replies  that  such  extraordinary  utter- 
ances must  be  inspired,  the  judgment  of  a  super-man,  yea 
of  God ;  for  man  in  all  the  mountains  of  history  in  which 
he  has  told  his  own  tale,  has  never  been  frank  enough 
to  look  at  himself  as  he  is ;  still  does  he  need  a  sacrifice 
to  let  him,  personally,  go  free.  And  when  suddenly  con- 
fronted with  himself  as  he  is,  in  all  his  moral  nakedness, 
as  revealed  by  the  Great  War,  he  deplores  that  he  has 
been  driven  out  of  his  Eden,  which  is  only  another  way 
of  saying  from  his  Garden  of  Lies.  ...  At  this  solemn 
moment,  stript  of  his  last  rags  of  historical  self-praise, 
with  five  millions  of  his  brothers  lying  around  him  in 
death  agonies,  this  peculiar  animal,  otherwise  known  as 
man,  is  now  standing  naked  before  his  fellow-kind  in 
acknowledged  self-distrust  of  all  the  old  lies  by  which 
once  he  was  wont  to  fool  himself.  It  cannot  longer  be 
concealed  that  the  eye  of  the  eagle  sees  more  than  the 


THE  FIG  LEAF!  123 

eye  of  the  groveling  toad.  Is  he  tired  of  being  a  toad 
and  now  longs  to  be  an  eagle?  .  .  . 

§       §       § 

fl/  wish  to  make  perfectly  clear  that  in  no  wise  do  I 
endorse  these  ravings;  they  seem  to  be  such  as  one  might 
best  hear  in  Bloomingdale.  .  .  .  Let  us  be  sensible: 
this  is  a  "practical"  world;  we  have  to  live  in  it;  we  have 
to  have  something  to  live  by,  that  is  a  fact;  we  must 
believe  something,  so  why  not  the  best,  as  it  were?  Are 
our  Great  Historical  Personages  to  be  made  a  mock  of? 
The  writer's  theory  is  perfectly  anarchistic,  to  wit,  that 
in  writing  history  we  should  put  man  in  the  story  as  he 
is.  Now  I  protest  this  is  going  too  far.  No  honest 
father  cares  to  place  before  his  growing  daughter  certain 
facts  as  to  what  sort  of  fellow  he  is,  or  was;  there  are 
certain  National  peculiarities,  also,  that  no  conservative 
historian  can  dwell  on  and  expect  to  hold  the  good  will 
of  his  fellow-citizens.  Fill  it  in  to  suit  yourself.  .  .  .  The 
rights  of  the  Settled  Order  should  come  first,  I  protest. 
History  should  not  be  a  spying-glass  or  tell-tale  such  as 
they  have  in  the  Philadelphia  upper-flats,  to  peek  up  and 
down  the  street;  nay,  history  should  instead  be  a  cloak 
to  cover  our  scars  and  to  make  us  look  dignified  and 
charming.  Why  God  himself  in  the  Garden  made  our 
First  Parents  put  on  something.  ...  /  trust  I  do  not 
misquote  history?  My  mind  is  so  upset  by  this  damned 
nonsense  of  a  new  historical-thing!  Pardon  my  bold 
language,  friends. 

§       §       § 

fl  In  plain  words,  we  have  long  been  writing  history  in 
such  a  way  that,  in  effect,  it  has  become  a  sort  of  glori- 
fied Rogue's  March,  wherein  man  has  deliberately  pre- 
sented himself  as  a  poseur, 
fi  This  dastardly   form  of  historical  quackery  is  now, 


124  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

thank  God,  becoming  more  and  more  difficult  to  sustain, 
and  is  rapidly  playing  out.  The  Great  War  has  forced 
us  to  revise  our  pretensions  and  to  return  to  earth. 
fl  For  the  first  time  in  centuries  man  will  now  have  a 
genuine  opportunity  to  look  at  himself  not  as  he  thinks 
he  ought  to  be,  but  as  he  is,  as  a  human  animal;  and  it 
will  be  increasingly  difficult  for  him  henceforth  to  enact 
the  poseur  and  the  demi-god.  The  great  question  is,  Is 
he  satisfied  with  the  picture  he  presents  .  .  .  ? 

§.    §       § 

fl  Greusel  coins  a  peculiar  phrase   to   characterize   the 

conventional  reserve  of  history.  He  brazenly  calls  his- 
tory, as  writ,  a  "sort  of  glorified  Rogue's  March,"  by 
which  he  undoubtedly  means  that  we  are  all  more  or  less 
scoundrels,  and  were  justice  done,  "Few  would  escape 
the  whipping  post."  To  this  I  reply:  There  is  a  law  of 
propriety,  as  between  gentlemen,  and  in  my  opinion  it  is 
all  tommyrot  to  go  about  inquiring  where  this  or  that 
Great  Personage  got  his  money,  or  to  number  the  devious 
political  ways  in  which  any  Nation  (not  excluding  our 
own  America}  gained  first  rank  on  land  or  on  sea.  The 
President  assures  us  in  his  Messages  that  we  are  a  Chosen 
People;  and  besides,  I  think  that  honest  men  are  agreed 
that  the  world  is  quite  well  off  as  it  is;  and  no  new- 
fangled ideas  of  history-writing  should  offend  our  Amer- 
ican sensibilities.  Let  us  sustain  things  as  they  are!  The 
Settled  Order,  with  our  system  of  Certified  and  Standard- 
ized things!  Our  landed  estates,  our  interest,  bond  and 
mortgage  accounts,  our  happy  homes!  Yes,  under 
Heaven,  I  do  solemnly  proclaim  that  our  very  soup  kitch- 
ens, our  foundlings'  homes,  our  prisons,  are  in  them- 
selves evidences  of  humane  efforts  to  make  things  better; 
and  I,  for  one,  see  no  reason  why  they  should  be  attacked, 
or  exposed.  .  .  .  We  do  not  expect  our  sons  to  be  saints, 


"GUILTY  OR  NOT  GUILTY?"  125 

of  course;  but  why  speak  of  It,  why  dwell  on  it,  why 
rasp  on  it,  why  harp  on  it?  Let  it  be  widely  known  that 
the  virtues  have  their  place  in  the  lives  of  eminent  Ameri- 
cans; it  is  elevating  to  the  youth  of  the  land,  all  this 
report  of  virtue,  even  tho  some  of  the  National  stuff  be> 
a  bit  spurious,  to  be  sure.  ...  In  short,  in  the  olden 
days — the  good  old  days! — a  rogue  got  three  months  for 
soliciting  alms  without  authority;  or  for  pretending  to 
read  the  palm,  or  the  stars;  or  for  deserting  his  wife  and 
leaving  the  child  on  the  parish; — and  now  let  us  add  that 
a  similar  penalty  ought  to  obtain  for  the  scribbler  (I  will 
not  term  him  an  historian),  who  would  make  a  mock  of 
the  Settled  Order.  It  should  be  a  prison  offence  for  any 
writer  to  reveal  the  secret  ways  in  ivhich  a  Great  Per- 
sonage or  a  Great  Nation  came  forward  in  worldly  wealth 
or  honors.  Yes,  indeed!  Fi,  fi,  say  I  to  the  contrary- 
minded! 

§       §       § 

ff  Few  men  hate  themselves  enough  to  tell  the  truth  about 
their  secret  motives ;  men  fear  truth,  fleeing  as  tho  from 
the  plague,  nay  become  panic-stricken  when  face  to  face 
with  those   supreme  moments  in  which  Truth   is  an- 
nounced as  about  to  open  the  door. 
Yea,  mark  the  solemn  hush  in  court  when  the  judge 
asks  with  an  air  of  ominous  foreboding : 
ff  "Gentlemen  of  the  jury,  have  you  agreed   on  your 
verdict  ?" 

fl  "We  have,  your  honor." 
j[  "And  what  say  you,  guilty  or  not  guilty  ?" 
fl  Thus  in  all  the  crises  of  life,  moments  of  supreme  revel- 
ation are  moments  of  frozen  silence,  as  tho  the  human 
heart  stood  still  at  the  very  thot  of  justice. 
Fearing  to  face  the  plain  facts  as  we  know  them  in 
secret  places,  man  sets  up  his  many  imaginations  to  pre- 


126  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

sent  self-interest  in  the  guise  of  patriotism,  glory,  honor, 
or  virtue. 

Behold  the  scoundrel,  borrowing  robes  of  righteousness 
to  help  him  in  his  fight  to  overcome  virtue :  observe  too 
the  Nation,  setting  out  to  play  the  blackguard,  proclaim 
always  that  her  intrigues  of  politics  are  high  and  holy 
rites  supported  by  religion  and  annointed  of  God. 
fl  Man  is  a  peculiar  animal,  and  one  of  the  strangest 
things  about  him  is  his  habit  of  pretending  to  look  at  the 
stars  while  in  reality  groveling  in  the  pit. 
He  calls  black,  white;  up,  down;  East,  West;  cruelty, 
mercy ;  ill-will,  charity ;  prejudice,  toleration ;  and  death, 
life. 

What  peculiar  something  in  his  mad  brain  is  gratified 
enormously  by  this  final  mental  obsession  wherein  man 
refuses  even  to  be  honest  with  himself  ? 
fl  Man,  as  long  as  he  can  eat  in  secret,  knows  no  shame. 
Therefore,  his  pride  is  immensely  gratified  by  inventing 
what  he  terms  the  truth  of  history,  wherein  by  vast 
industry,  thru  endless  scribblings,  thru  parchments, 
treaties,  and  even  by  legends  on  tombs :  in  all  these  ways 
and  in  all  these  places,  man's  conception  of  honesty  with 
himself  is  to  try  to  present  himself  as  he  is  not.  .  .  . 
Likewise  multitudes  plunder  in  the  name  of  law,  all  the 
time  evoking  the  majesty  of  justice;  and  still  other  mul- 
titudes use  the  name  religion  to  gain  by  trafficking  in 
human  ignorance ;  and  there  are  yet  multitudes  that  while 
publicly  upholding  abstract  principles  of  brotherhood 
secretly  are  as  buzzards  living  on  dead  flesh. 
If  the  prostitute  would  no  longer  make  pretense  of  vir- 
tue ...  if  the  statesman  would  no  longer  insist  that  he 
lives  to  do  good  to  others  ...  if  the  news-monger  would 
no  longer  cry  in  the  market-place  that  he  is  the  one  true 
friend  of  the  people  ...  if  the  convict  would  admit  that 


ON  THAT  GREAT  DAY !  127 

he  is  guilty  ...  if  the  judge  would  rise  in  court  and 
call  to  the  multitude  that  he  has  trafficked  in  justice  .  .  . 
or  if  the  leader  of  the  new  religion  would,  from  his 
pulpit,  some  morning  openly  confess  that  it  was  all  a 
fake  and  a  sham  .  .  .  ! 

From  that  moment  of  self -revelation,  wherein  man  would 
no  longer  make  mock  and  ill-omen  of  his  higher  self,  man 
would  no  longer  need  call  on  God  to  support  his  feeble 
virtues,  nor  dream  of  some  imaginary  Kingdom  of  Right- 
eousness afar,  for  indeed  would  the  larger  life  be  very 
close  at  hand. 

"I  sit  and  look  out  upon  all  the  sorrows  of  the 
world,  and  upon  all  opposition  and  shame : 
I  see  in  low  life  the  mother  misused  by  her  chil- 
dren, dying,  neglected,  gaunt,  desperate : 
I  see  the  wife  misused  by  her  husband,  I  see 

the  tremendous  seducer  of  young  women : 
I  mark  the  ranklings  of  jealousy  and  unre- 
quited love  attempted  to  be  hid,  I  see  these 
sights  on  the  earth. 
I  see  the  workings  of  battle,  pestilence,  tyranny, 

I  see  martyrs  and  prisoners : 
I  observe  the  slights  and  degradations  cast  by 
arrogant  persons  upon  laborers,  the  poor, 
and  upon  negroes,  and  the  like : 
All  these,  all  the  meanness  and  agony  without 

end,  I,  sitting,  look  out  upon.  .  .  ." 
fl  And  now  we  must  bring  this  Rogue's  March  book  to  a 
sudden  close.     The  hour  is  growing  late,  the  candle  is 
dimming  fast  as  it  sputters  in  its  socket,  with  our  task 
still  before  us !     Here,  then,  we  bid  you  farewell, 
fi  It  is  for  your  common  sense  to  remind  you  now,  with 
sadness,  to  what  extent  we  have  shown  that  man  has 
made  himself  the  pitiful  victim  to  words  instead  of  faith. 


128  THE  ROGUE'S  MARCH 

We   mumble   words   in   our   histories   and   biographies, 
words  in  the  market-place,  words  in  our  prayers ; — and 
still  the  human  carnival  goes  on. 
There  is  the  word  patriotism. 

It  has  been  used  since  Time  began — to  cover  buccanneer- 
ing  expeditions  whose  naked  object  is  murder  and 
plunder. 

We  have  also  the  high-sounding  words  love,  religion, 
property,  business  enterprise,  statesmanship,  humanity. 
And  of  all  these  words,  it  is  a  question  whether  the 
truth  has  ever  been  told  thru  the  unending  procession  of 
the  centuries :  and  taking  men  at  their  own  valuation 
thru  their  acts,  is  it  indeed  to  be  expected  that  the  day 
will  yet  come  when  men  clearly  understand  the  real  defi- 
nition of  these  words? 

fl  Truth,  the  Eternal  Magdalen,  made,  what  she  is  by  the 
brutish  impositions  of  men,  has   for  many  long  years 
hidden  her  face  in  the  market-place,  awaiting  a  new  race 
of  men  to  set  her  free. 
fl  How  much  longer  must  she  wait  ? 

THE   END 


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